Ace in the Hole

Chapter Eight - Survival of the Fittest

“It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight, Risin' up to the challenge of our rival…-“

Pearl and I awoke the next day at daybreak.  We each took a meager bit of food out of our food saddlebag and had breakfast.  Our food wouldn’t hold out long, and we had to conserve every bit of it until we found a good source of food.   We decided that we were going to go after food first.  Windstorm wouldn’t have any food and we weren’t sure what kind of condition he would be in after yesterday.  I decided that it would be good if I went hunting because I was familiar with being on my own in the middle of the woods.  Pearl was going to scout out a good place for us to stay until we were all ready to head off.  We needed a place that would provide decent shelter from rain and obscure the view of any fire that we would need for cooking the animals that I killed.  I was hoping for some small cave that we could use because it would be easier to find than some thick mat of leaves.

I spent about a half hour figuring out how the cartridges of my crossbow worked and the fastest ways to refill the bolts.  I came up with a technique that involved laying six crossbow bolts across my front leg and letting them slide into place within the wooden cartridge.  I would then drop the excess bolts into a saddlebag I held underneath me.  With a quick snap of my hoof, I could ram the wooden cartridge into place and be ready to shoot within three seconds of refilling.  I got this maneuver down pretty quickly and was fairly comfortable with my new weapon.

“I’m going out to go hunting,” I told Pearl.  “Hopefully, there are some animals that we can eat in here and I’ll also keep a lookout for berries.  I don’t plan on being gone for too long so I’ll be back here in around five hours.  Will you be back by then?”

Pearl nodded.  “Yeah, that sounds good Surefire.  Are you sure that you don’t want any help?  I bet I could help you spot some things.”

It was a pleasant idea.  I didn’t exactly relish the thought of going out into the Haunted Hollows alone.  On the other hand, I realized that we would get more done if split up than if we worked together.  “I’m sure, Pearl.  In five hours, we will meet back here and you can show me what kind of place you’ve found.  After that, we will have another five hours of daylight where we can search for Windstorm.”

“If you think it’s for the best, I’ll go look for a place to camp.  Just stay safe please?  I will be waiting here for you when you come back and if you don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do.”  She walked over to me and gave me a tight hug, as though she was afraid that she would lose me if she let go.  I knew that we would both be worried for each other over the next five hours, but there was nothing that we could do to alleviate that fear.

“There is nothing in this forest that can stop me from coming back to you, Pearl. Nothing.  The same goes for Windstorm.  The two of you have become closer than family to me and I refuse to give up on either of you without a fight.  I’ll be back here.”  With this emotional speech, I gave her a quick hug and walked off into the depths of the Haunted Hollows.

The Haunted Hollows honestly weren’t as scary as everyone made them out to be.  I mean sure, I ran like mad away from some large beast that I had never seen before, but other than that, it was almost the same.  I found two rabbits in the first three hours of hunting, which was less than I was used to. These rabbits were also much thinner and more spread out throughout the forest.  I reasoned this was because of a larger number of predators and more competition for food with all the strange animals that I had seen around.  I had seen a deer, but I doubted that I would get anything beneficial from killing it.  I would probably have to waste time skinning the meat off of its body and leave most of it behind because I doubted I could carry it through the rough terrain.  The thick underbrush provided splendid cover but it was extremely dense and very hard to move through.  The deer would have only slowed me down further and I would have been late to the meeting place with Pearl.  After finding a couple bushes of familiar berries, I decided to head back.  It was enough food for all three of us to eat, but it would not provide any leftovers.

Another problem we had was water.  I had forgotten about the need for a portable water source as I had lived close to a relatively clean source of it.  Now, in the wild, water became a commodity.  I found a stream while wandering around and spent a few minutes drinking as much as I could.  I didn’t know when I was going to have another opportunity to get a drink and I wasn’t going to waste this one.

After my drink, I decided to take a short break before setting off to the meeting place again.  I spent my short break lying on the ground thinking about how we could get some sort of canteen to hold water.  Making one out of wood would be no good because wood is too porous and would lose the water quickly.  A metal canteen would be nice, but in the wild, we had no access to any place to produce something of that caliber.  These thoughts were flowing through my head and I soon began to feel that I was nodding off.  My eyes had closed and I was beginning to fall asleep.  I was shaking myself awake when I began to feel a warm rain. ‘Strange,’ I thought, ‘I didn’t remember it looking like it was going to rain today.  And since when was rain this warm?’ I yawned and opened my eyes.  I stopped mid yawn.  Standing over top of me was the beast that I had run away from earlier today.  With a head of a lion and a tail of a scorpion, I was finally able to identify it as a manticore from the stories that I had heard in my childhood.  It appeared to be about to begin its evening meal, me.  I gave my brain a split second to evaluate my situation.  My crossbow would be effective at this close range, but I somehow doubted that I could take down a beast as large as this one with a few bolts from a crossbow.  My knife was in the saddlebag near my front hoof and I could reach it with a quick roll.  I again decided that this wasn’t a good option either as I probably couldn’t even kill the thing with my knife.  My only other option was to roll away from my weapons and make a run for it.  It would be disappointing to lose my gear, but it would be even more disappointing to lose my life.  I decided that this was going to be my best option and took it.

In one swift and violent motion, I threw my body weight to the side as fast as I could and I was able to pull myself up onto my hooves.  I made a mental note of where I left my stuff and ran in the opposite direction of my meeting place with Pearl.  It made sense that I would want to keep such a dangerous beast away from her.  I knew that I was going to be late to the meeting and she was going to be extremely worried and even more reluctant to let me out of her sight again.  There was nothing I could do about that, and so I did all that I could. Run. ‘Funny how on the verge of death, all I can think about is how Pearl will feel.  I wonder if I’m just a bit to attached to her.  Maybe I need to see a doctor or something.’

The chase lasted for ten heart pounding minutes.  The manticore was pretty interested in me and knew its way around the forest very well.  The only way I managed to elude it was by fitting through spaces to small for the manticore to fit through.  At the end of the chase, I was dead tired.  I could see that the manticore wasn’t tiring as fast as I was.  I came up with a plan to allow me time to recover and hopefully cause the manticore to lose interest in me.  I climbed into a tree that the manticore could not climb and I spent time catching my breath on a tree branch.  The manticore seemed pleased that it had treed its quarry and was now ready for me to climb down and embrace my fate.  I had other plans.  After a five-minute rest, I let the manticore know what my real plan was.  I began hopping from tree branch to tree branch, back towards where my stuff was.  This annoyed the manticore, he appeared to have a much harder time navigating while keeping his eyes looking into the canopy of the forest.  Some story I had heard back at the guild mentioned that a pony a long time ago had made friends with a manticore by pulling a thorn out of its paw.  This manticore didn’t appear to be crazed, I judged based upon its blood red eyes that incessantly followed me.  I thought I lost the manticore a few times in the canopy only to see it reappear thirty seconds later, still following me.

Twenty minutes or so passed in this fashion until I again reached the stream.  I  could still see my stuff was in the same condition I left it in and I desperately wanted to retrieve it.  I hadn’t seen the manticore for a few minutes and I judged that know was a safe time to make a break for it.  I hopped down to some of the lower branches on the tree that I was on and jumped into the stream.  I swam out of the stream and threw all of my things into my bag.  I took a split second to take out the semi-used cartridge of bolts and replaced it with a full cartridge. I began running back towards where I was supposed to meet Pearl.  I was almost hidden by the underbrush, when the manticore again came bounding after me.  I appeared to have irritating it by alluding its attempts to kill me and now it seemed to be in a blood rage.  I moved through the underbrush as quickly as I could, but my hind leg got caught up in some sort of plant.  I couldn’t free my leg and I turned around to face the manticore.  I was on my back and all I had in my hoof was my crossbow.  The manticore came crashing through the underbrush and roared as it saw its query was trapped.  I took this opportunity to shoot at the manticore in a final attempt to slay it or keep it at bay.  I shot three bolts at its eyes, one of which hit its targets and caused the beast to roar in pain and anger.  My remaining three bolts went into the manticore’s open mouth and the manticore appeared unfazed by my bolts and continued on its path towards me.  The manticore began to slow down, I guessed to gloat in its victory before eating its prey.  The manticore then began to make a wheezing sound and its blood started coming out of its lion ears and mouth.  Apparently, my bolts had been effective in hurting it.  The manticore’s eyes showed its unbelieving rage as it felt its life force seep out of its body.  It took a lazy swing at me and gave me four rows of claw marks in my side.  It appeared to be attempting to take another swing at me until it fell over onto me coughing out the last bit of blood onto my coat as he died.

I had to squeeze myself out from underneath the manticore’s body and then untangle my leg from the vines that held me captive.  There was no feeling greater than the feeling of relief I felt at that moment when I realized that my life had been saved.  I stood over the dead body of the manticore dumbstruck.  ‘Wait, I just killed something THIS big?’ I thought. ‘I must be dreaming.’ I pinched myself to try and figure out if I was asleep or not.  I felt pain so I guess it wasn’t a dream.

Well there was no reason that I shouldn’t make the most out of this.  I took out my knife and began carving out chunks of meat that looked edible in the manticore.  I decided to just cut off the scorpion’s tail because I didn’t know if the meat there would be poisonous.  While I was carving the manticore up, I noticed that its stomach looked as though it was made of a very thick lining of muscle.  I spent a couple minutes cutting it out and looked at it.  The stomach lining looked to be extremely resilient and I figured that we could use it to cook things in, like soup, and maybe use it to store water.  Either way, I was excited with the kill and was eager to show Pearl what I had gotten. Pearl.  I was late.  I scooped up my things and ran as fast as I could back to the meeting place. ‘She’s going to kill me for being so late,’ I thought. ‘Oh well, at least we know have a decent surplus of food.’

When I arrived back at the meeting place, Pearl practically tackled me and looked at me with a face full of worry.

“Where have you been, Surefire? You’re over an hour late?  I didn’t know what to do.  Should I have gone after you and looked for you or was I just supposed to wait here?  What if you were injured and you needed my help?”  Pearl hit me across the face and then pulled me into another one of her tight hugs.  “Why would you make me worry like that Surefire?  I thought you were always true to your word.”

She pulled away from me and gasped.  Her white coat was covered in blood.

“Are you okay?  I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were hurt with your black coat and all.”  Pearl began looking all over my body for the source of the blood.

“Calm down Pearl, most of this blood isn’t even mine.  I do have a few cuts on that are hidden by my saddlebags that you can tend to if it makes you feel better.”  She finally let me put down my saddlebags and get comfortable.  When she saw the long deep scratches the manticore had left on my side, she began wrapping it up in some thick leaves and fawning over me.  I didn’t really mind because I liked any attention I could get from Pearl.  While she nursed my wounds, I told her what happened during the day.  She was especially excited about the stomach that we could use to hold hot rocks and make soup when our food supplies were running low.  When I showed her how much meat I brought for us to eat, she was extremely excited and began figuring out how many days it would last us.  After Pearl was satisfied that I was fine and wouldn’t die, she led me to a cave that she had found earlier that day.

“Well, this is home for a little while,” She said welcoming me to a nice, dry cave in the side of a small hill.  Well it was actually more of an alcove than a cave but it would suit our purposes just fine.  I lay down everything that I didn’t need and pulled out my crossbow and an extra cartridge of arrows.  In the couple of weeks ago, I would have scoffed if anypony told me that I would be arming myself for a fight to the death every time I stepped out of someplace familiar.  Experience had taught me that having a little extra firepower on my side was never a bad idea.  Now properly armed, I was ready to go looking for Windstorm.

“Ready?” I asked Pearl, who had been gearing up to go find Windstorm.

“Ready,” Pearl confirmed.  With that, we stepped out of our humble abode and we were on the hunt.  Our target, a grey coated pegasus with a green mane.  How hard could it be for two earth ponies in unfamiliar territory?