Blazer had been appointed assistant foreman in Ratchet’s place, not only because he had been with Rusty for nearly as long as the late unicorn had been, but also because he wasn’t good for anything other than supervising with the stitches across his knee. Crunch’s suggestion to build a scaffold, while helpful, hadn’t traveled far off the drawing board, however. They hadn’t even milled enough lumber for such a construction task, and considering the value of the wood they were cutting in the first place, Rusty had put the kibosh on any action until further notice.

There was something incredibly undignified about cutting down a century-old tree, then using it to build scaffolding. That sentiment was shared among the workers. As one had put it, “These ain’t douglas firs; t’ain’t right to use ‘em as such.” If push came to shove, then sacrifices would have to be made, however, with enough supplies to last for months, there was little urgency as far as most were concerned.

Ratchet would be buried in the forest, and life would go on.

However, they would eventually need to find a way out—the topic wasn’t being ignored. Seventeen ponies were getting to work, a bit sluggish post-lunch, but three in particular were preparing for something a little bit different.

Crunch chewed his inner lip as he rummaged through the contents of his saddlebags, hoof ruffling quite a few papers and knocking against a compass. Shayne sat beside him, managing to look both bored and frustrated at the same time. She had been allowed to don her gear once more, and her sword, however the rifle remained absent.

“This wasn’t in my job description,” the orange pegasus muttered under his breath, sparing a hoof to press his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He shook his head, then closed the flap on his bag and instead went to the other to withdraw a canteen, which he briefly examined before tucking away once more. “I’m an administrative assistant. I’m here to crunch numbers and keep records, but then if I’d wanted a desk job...” He trailed off with a tiny sigh. “Might as well make the most of it.”

“Oh I get it now,” Shayne droned, flicking one ear as she watched him trifle. “Crunch. You crunch numbers. Kind of an awkward name, isn’t it?”

Crunch looked up, pursing his lips. “Why are you coming with us again?”

Shayne just shrugged. “Guess I’m not very good at cutting down trees and Rusty wanted to give me something to do that wasn’t being tied up in my tent.”

Crunch gazed at her for a moment, opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it, and instead, snatched up a kerosene lantern and started trying to stuff it into a mostly-empty saddlepack.

“Besides,” Shayne added. “You need someone physically competent to watch your ass.” She looked away from Crunch, her eyes landing on a stallion that was approaching the both of them. He was an earth pony, taller than average, kind of sleek in frame, but boxy around the chest and firm in the shoulders. “Oh look, another one.”

The stallion stopped before the both of them, then sat back and adjusted the light blue flannel he was wearing. “Rusty told me to meet you two.” He glanced between the both of them. “I was told we were scouting the valley.” His voice was soft, smooth in a surprising sort of way. It matched his appearance, to say the least. His cream fur was thick, but well-maintained, and his long, auburn mane spilled down around his shoulders on both sides of his head; it didn’t exactly shine, but it sure was impressive, if not a little frazzled, in need of a brush and an hour of attention. He cast his blue eyes on Crunch, lifted a brow, then turned them to Shayne. “Nice sword.”

“Thanks.” She eyed him. “Nice shirt.”

“Thanks.” The stallion looked off over his shoulder. “So, what’re we scouting?”

Crunch finished attending to his bags, yanking one of the buckles tight with his teeth before turning his attention to the new arrival. “Anything. Also, maybe another way out.” He heaved his bags up, grunting as he struggled to pull them up onto his back. Eventually, he got things situated, then pointed off towards the creek with a wingtip. “All running water leads somewhere.”

The cream stallion nodded. “Water has a way of going places, doesn’t it?” He held out his hoof. “I’m Rosewood.” Crunch shook it, and he held it out to Shayne, who didn’t. Instead, he gave her a polite nod, which the bat at least returned.

Crunch led the way out of camp, down to the bend in the creek. The three stood in relative silence as he gazed down at the gurgling water, which wasn’t so much as rolling over stone than it was thick, black and crimson roots interwoven. The pegasus frowned, then nodded and started off, following the flow of the water.

It was slow-going. The foliage was thick, composed of stout ironwood trees made up of purples and reds and dark blues that grew haphazardly along the water’s edge and in between towering bloodwoods. Shorter, spindly trees filled in the gaps, with bark that resembled that of aspens, though judging by the red buds at the tips of them, they most certainly weren’t aspens. In the unimpressively gloomy light that the thick canopy above allowed to filter through, the many leaves and buds of the different plants and fauna had an eerie dimensionality to them—they cast little to no shadow, the light from above seeming to both come from everywhere, and nowhere, not a single defined line to be seen. It was like a poorly-taken photograph. In many ways it just felt off, unnatural to the senses. The light felt artificial.

The density of the trees and foliage, and even the undergrowth was entirely inconsistent. For the most part, trees encroached on all sides and made it difficult to see too far into the distance, however every now and then, one would be able to glance far off through the forest, catching brief glimpses of grand alleyways between rows of trees that seemed to stretch on for miles. The occasional patch of forestry too thick to even traverse would greet the group, and they would be forced to travel around it, rather than through.

With no clear indication of direction from the sun, had they not been following the stream, it would have been very easy to get lost.

Crunch was the first one to break the eerie silence that had been growing among the trio as they cut deeper into the bloodwood grove. He stopped eventually, sitting himself down on a patch of grass and leaves by the water’s edge in order to fish a tri-fold map of sorts from his saddlebags. “This place feels like a maze,” he grumbled, fanning the map out before him with his wings, gazing at the heavy, white parchment that he had clearly drawn upon himself—it was a rather impressive depiction of the valley, that odd oval shape with the two ends squeezed down to five points, similar in shape to an eyeball, like a double-sided teardrop that was severely lacking in symmetry. He’d already mapped out a few key points, approximately where their camp was, and where the lift had been, which was rather close to one of the sharp ends.

He took a moment to sketch, or at least try to sketch, the progress of the creek they’d been following while the other two milled about.

Rosewood strode up to the edge of the water and produced a canteen. He held it under, idly eyeing the bubbles that rose from the mouth as he traded air for water. When the bubbles stopped, he raised it, then took a sip. “Does anyone else find it odd that the water down here is nearly warm?” He looked between the other two with raised brows, before taking another sip from the canteen. “I don’t like it. Tastes swampy.”

“I don’t like anything about this place,” Shayne fired back, hardly missing a beat as she trotted up to the edge of the creek and dipped the end of her hoof. She twirled it around for a moment, then pulled back. “What’d you do to piss Rusty off enough to send you out here with me?”

Rosewood just chuckled as he topped off his canteen. Straightening up, the stallion screwed the lid back on, then used his wet hoof to brush back his mane. “I’m not much for felling trees. I do just about everything else, however. At the moment there’s a severe lack of cut trees, so I was in need of something to do.”

Shayne didn’t respond, and silence fell over them once more. It was Crunch who broke it a second time, taking a break from gnawing thoughtfully on the corner of his pen in order to speak. “How far do you suppose we’ve come?”

“Almost a quarter mile,” Shayne fired back.

Crunch looked over at her. “You’re sure of that?”

The bat rolled her eyes. “I was a royal guard for a long time. Just, trust me, I’ve been keeping track.”

Crunch nodded slowly, then went back to his map and made a small mark. “It’s hard to tell without the horizon for reference, but it feels like we’ve been on a pretty steep downhill... Right, then I guess we should, uh... continue on.” He folded the parchment up with a small sigh. “My hooves are already getting sore.”

The creek grew as they followed it, fed by smaller streams and perhaps even some natural springs as it weaved to and fro between gnarled tree trunks and the occasional boulder clutched in the mighty grasp of root clusters. Following it proved difficult, as the very thickest of the undergrowth seemed to crowd its banks, and the largest of bloodwoods loomed overhead, the stream steered and channeled by the waterlogged trunks and grasping roots. More concerning, it was starting to get darker, not only because the sun was getting lower in the sky on the other side of the canopy, but because the canopy itself was getting thicker.

Conversations of turning back were just starting to gain traction when Shayne took a mighty swing at the mat of branches ahead of them. They broke away and scattered to the ground, revealing more—a wall of leaves and gnarled branches, the bushy limbs of a very healthy bush. With a growl, the bat stepped forward and swung again, then a third time, hacking her way a couple feet into the spongy wall, gouging out a pony-sized hole.

“What’s with this fucking forest!?” she screamed, gnashing her teeth between swings as she hacked her way through a limb that was a couple inches across.

“Forget it!” Crunch called out to her. “We should head back. We aren’t prepared for this.”

Shayne kept hacking away, starting to pant from the exertion, taking what had to be days of pent up aggression out on the unsuspecting branches. She hacked, swung, snarled, slashed, then slashed one more time...

And hit nothing.

There was nothing beyond the short tunnel she’d cut in the wall of forestry. No more branches, no more leaves, and no more light.

Shayne froze, then slowly sheathed her sword. Her eyes went wide as she stepped forward, out of the gloomy excuse for daylight that was behind them, and into the nothing before them.

Crunch stepped up to the edge of the little tunnel she’d made, balking, while Rosewood peered over his shoulder, mouth going a little slack, ears perking, eyes widening. “Shayne!?” Crunch squeaked out, sitting back on his haunches and lifting a hoof to sift frantically through his saddlebags. Eventually, he found the handle of the lantern he’d packed, and yanked the thing out of his bags. Rosewood, in the meantime, just looked forward, then back, then forward, then back again.

Crunch got the lantern lit, then stepped forward with it aloft, the handle held by the primaries of his right wing,

The darkness gave way to a beach, or at least, the grove’s equivalent of a beach. What would normally be sand, was instead a thick mat of leaves and damp moss, spongy underhoof and reeking of mildew and iron. What lay beyond it could only be described as a lake. There were no waves, no moss growing on the surface, no sign of a current of any kind. The light didn’t travel very far across its surface, and whatever was on the other side of the body of water remained unseen. Judging from the curve of the bank, however, it was safe to say that it was a rather large lake.

Normally, a lake in the middle of the woods wouldn’t have been very out of the ordinary. The complete and total lack of light, however, and the morbid stillness of the air that gave its surface the glossy reflection of an untouched, indoor pool, was what set off the proverbial alarm bells.

Shayne was standing just at the water’s edge, staring out into the darkness, her eyes wide, pupils almost entirely dilated as gazed at something unseen. “This isn’t right,” she said quietly.

Crunch padded up beside her and set his lantern down on a mat of roots, then looked over his shoulder at the thick wall of moss and entwined branches that made up the ‘wall.’ “Can you see in here?”

Shayne nodded once. “Barely.”

Rosewood moved up and sat himself down on her other side, kneading his hooves at the ground before him. His ears were folded. He too looked back over his shoulder, at the ragged circle of wan reddish-yellow light that spilled into the chamber from the direction they’d come.

That’s what it was, a chamber.

“Hey, numbers guy,” Rosewood muttered, his quiet voice louder than it had any right to be in the silence.

Crunch leaned back and looked over at him behind Shayne’s head. “Yeah?”

“Where the fuck are we?”

Crunch shook his head, then looked back out over the water. They all did. “I don’t know. I... this isn’t like... this isn’t right. Rusty isn’t telling us something about this place, something that I feel like we really need to know. I have my suspicions.” His gaze snapped over to Shayne. “You’re in on it, huh?”

The batmare nodded a second time. She blinked, and it was almost audible. She didn’t take her eyes off whatever it was she was staring at. “I thought I was.”

A pregnant silence hung in the air, the awe of the ‘room’ seeming to instill it upon the trio.

Rosewood broke it after a moment or two. “Does anyone else get the feeling that we shouldn’t be here? I don’t know what it is. I’m just getting...”

“Bad vibes,” Crunch finished quietly.

Rosewood nodded. “Yeah...” He looked over at Shayne. “What’re you looking at?”

Shayne blinked, then swallowed once, hard, and finally tore her gaze away from the darkness, instead, looking down at the lamp as he pupils returned to a normal size. “I can’t see the other side, but there’s a... tree in the middle, the biggest tree I’ve ever seen. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”

Another pregnant silence. Eventually Crunch responded.

“Can you try to describe it?” he asked softly, almost in a whisper.

Shayne looked away from the lantern, and back out across the cavern once more. “It’s like its own island, with roots the size of tree trunks reaching out around it, making up the base. The trunk is huge, bigger than a house, and it just goes up. I can’t see the top of it. It’s like... I don’t know, it’s fat, like it’s bulging in the middle, like it's so heavy it's sagging under its own weight. No branches down low.”

Crunch picked up his lantern, and held it aloft in his right hoof. Slowly, he unfurled his wings. “I want to see it.”

“What?” Shayne’s gaze snapped over to him. “No, that’s a bad idea.”

“I completely agree,” added Rosewood.

Crunch just shook his head, flitting his wings as he stepped forward. His right hoof came down in the water, and a perfect reflection of it slid out across the surface, until the two hoof-tips met, sending a semi-circle of tiny ripples out across the lake; they were slow, capacious ripples that rolled slowly and quietly out across the surface of the pool, until they’d traveled beyond the reach of the lantern. “Please excuse me for sounding cliche, but this could be something nopony’s ever seen before, something that’s never been documented. I want to see it so I can make a sketch of it.” He eyed Rosewood as he spoke, but then he flicked his eyes to Shayne. “You wanna know why my name is Crunch? It’s a lame name, I know, but...” He looked back out into the darkness. “It isn’t my real name. It’s a name my friends gave me in college, cause I was always crunching for tests, papers, anything. I went to classes I wasn’t even taking in my spare time just to listen to lectures and learn more stuff I’d probably never use. I got into accounting because I’m good with numbers, but really... I wanted to be good at everything. I could have gotten a job working at some desk, but I wouldn’t be learning anything out there. I came out here because I thought logging was pretty cool—it was a total whim, and I certainly wouldn’t have come out here if I knew it was going to turn out this way...” He sighed. “ But we’re here now. Look, booksmart just isn’t enough; I’m starting to learn that. I have never heard of anything like this. I need to go see it.”

“Damn kid, didn’t ask for your life story” Shayne said with a huff. “Nice aspirations though. Making me feel like an aimless failure with all your explorative studies bullshit.”

The orange pegasus sighed, rolled his eyes, and shrugged off his saddlebags. He snapped his wings out, and sprang forward, taking to the air with the whish of air through his feathers, the water below him rippling as his hind legs cast harsh and spastic shadows on the ground behind and below him.

“Wait!” Shayne shouted, unfurling her own wings, the leathery appendages fanning out to catch the stale air as she tore off after him.

“I don’t have a light!” Rosewood shouted after the both of them. He reached out a hoof to gesture in frustration after the two, then sighed and set it back down on the shore. Darkness shrouded him as he watched the flicking yellow light of Crunch’s lantern drift across the lake, drawing further and further away. “This is insane,” he added in an undertone, speaking to himself, listening to the fading voices of the other two as they bickered their way across.

The darkness swallowed the feeble light from the lantern—a directional flashlight likely would have come in handy, something with more of a throw. Rosewood tapped his hoof anxiously against a root, listening to the thump-a-thump of the impact as something appeared in the light in the distance.

Shayne had described it well. It was a massive, black, gnarled and tumorous-looking thing. It was made of wood, but it didn’t look much like a tree, not by any of their standards. It had truly formed its own island, made entirely of gnarled and twisted roots that curled around the base of the trunk and spread out into the water—each one was as large, or perhaps even larger than the already-massive bloodwood trees of the grove. It was hard to properly grasp just how large the entire thing was without something for reference, perspective and distance not entirely lining up with one another.

Of course, Shayne and Crunch served as that reference as they landed upon one of the massive roots. By the looks of it, they’d traveled a little over a hundred yards, close enough that one could make out their mane and coat colors, but far enough that facial expressions or any finer details were entirely lost. Even the roots dwarfed them. The thing itself, was more of a backdrop. It made up the majority of the center of the lake to such an extent that the lake seemed to be more of a particularly wide moat than it did an actual lake. It was hard to imagine how a tree could appear fat, but this one did.

Rosewood squinted, sitting in the gloom as he peered at the two across the water, listening to their muted voices, unable to make out individual words, their tonality muddied by distance but carried across the water like vibration down taut rope.

“Fine,” he grumbled to himself, looking back over his shoulder at the doorway they’d created, which was truly the only source of light within this section of the forest, aside from Crunch’s lantern. “Leave the earth pony alone on the shore of the haunted tree cave without a light. I don’t mind. Guess I’ll just sit here and not die.”

Another beam of light lit up across the lake, this one white and unnatural, conical rather than radiant—a flashlight. The bat was holding it, waving it about. The beam traveled much farther than the lantern light, and even glanced off a couple sections of ‘ceiling;’ of course, it was just more leaves and branches.

Crunch’s yelp of surprise carried all the way across the water, and a second later, came a clatter of metal and the delicate pop of a lantern bulb breaking. The sound was visceral, like a mason jar dropped on a tile floor.

The yellow light went out.

The white beam of light flicked about in the air. Shayne’s voice carried across the lake, calling out.

A shiver traveled up Rosewood’s spine. He swallowed once, hard, the wet sound of his throat convulsing cruelly audible in the gloom.

The pegasus’ scream broke the silence. No imaginable fear, worldy or otherwise, could justify the raw terror in Crunch’s voice—to call it his voice was a misstep, because in that moment, it wasn’t his voice, but rather, a primal screech of such a volume that Rosewood, even from far across the water, could hear the poor stallion’s vocal chords self-destructing in their feeble attempt to properly convey his distress.

Rosewood would never forget that scream. Nopony would ever be able to forget a scream like that. It was a sound that couldn’t be replicated, or even imagined. It chilled him to the bone, sent a lightning bolt of panic surging through his skull, triggering his fight or flight and heavily insisting that he perform the latter, because the former was a concept of unimaginable horror. But he didn’t move, forehooves rooted to the spot as they trembled, and he watched that white beam flick about as Shayne hopped from root to root, calling out.

Crunch screamed again, the silence between the two panic-stricken cries having only lasted long enough for the stallion to inhale enough air to scream again. It was just as long, just as loud, and just as terrible, but with more grating gargle of damaged vocal chords.

He could do nothing but listen and watch as Shayne’s white beam of light jerked about, then shrank down to a mere pinprick as the flashlight was dropped. Light shouts and a hint of a scuffle carried across the water. It went on for far too long, though Rosewood never blinked.

Eventually, that flashlight beam moved once again, shaking about spastically for a second or two before steadying, then shining in his direction.

It started moving closer.

The sound of furiously flapping bat wings filled the air, and Shayne appeared through the gloom, teeth grit around the shaft of her silver flashlight as she dragged Crunch below and somewhat behind her. The orange pegasus was flailing, very much alive as Shayne maintained a grip on his right foreleg, his lower half dragging through the water, leaving a rippling and swirling wake of red in the water behind him. Shayne’s hooves, shoulders, face, and a good portion of her chest was spattered with a deep maroon tar, or perhaps it was sap. Crunch was coated in it, more red than orange. At first, Rosewood worried that it could have been blood, but it was far too viscous, and too dark.

They had almost reached the other side when Crunch, still doing his best to scream, despite his lack of breath and shredded vocal chords, writhed out of her grasp and flopped down in the water face-first, about four feet from the bank. Shayne jerked upwards from the sudden weight imbalance, turned over in the air, then slapped down into the water as well, her flashlight landing on the shore with the business-end shining uselessly at a root.

Darkness prevailed once again, and the sound of the two thrashing in the water filled the air. With shaky hooves, Rosewood rushed over to the light and snatched it up. He steadied himself, then pointed in in their direction.

Shayne’s eyes were wild as she scrubbed her forehooves with fervor. Crunch had dragged himself to shore. He was there, physically, but Crunch was gone. A brief glance at his eyes revealed the terrifying fact that, at the moment, nopony was home. He was no longer trembling, or writhing, or screaming. He was just laying there, chin on the shore, forehooves outstretched before him. His limp, ruffled wings floated out at his sides in the water, feathers still sticky with whatever the putrid, foul-smelling red substance the two were coated in. It seemed instinct had gotten him out of the water, some ingrained fear of drowning powered by reflex rather than conscious thought having motivated him to reach the relative safety of the shore while his consciousness remained in absence.

“What happened?” Rosewood asked, his voice sounding distant. Shayne just shook her head as she continued to scrub herself. “What happened!?” he repeated, this time shouting.

“I don’t know!” she hissed back, baring her fangs. She dropped down to all fours, then splashed her way over to Crunch, grabbing him by the shoulder to finish tugging him up onto the shore. “We need to go.”

Rosewood looked over his shoulder, at the spot they’d entered from. It was smaller, not by a lot, but noticeably so. They’d walked through it standing straight up, though to exit, they would have to tuck their shoulders and duck their heads.

He almost dropped the flashlight in his attempt to grab Crunch’s other hoof and help Shayne drag him across the shore. Once Rosewood got him to the exit, Shayne went back for his saddlebags.

When she squeezed her way out through the branches and the brush, Rosewood was sitting there waiting for her, supporting the half-limp orange pegasus, who was now, at least sitting up.

“What happened to him!?” Rosewood demanded.

Shayne dropped Crunch’s bags on the ground and locked eyes with him. She was trembling, but her voice was steady and clear.

“We have to get out of here.”

Author's Note

If you like this story so far, then please, feel free to tell me so, or even recommend it to friends. A big part of motivation, when it comes to writing, is the feedback it earns. Sometimes it's nice to know you aren't just hurling your words into the void.