Ace in the Hole

Chapter Thirteen – Caves of Confusion

“This ride that takes me through life, leads me into darkness but emerges into light…-Avenged Sevenfold“

Our caravan finally arrived at the foot of the mountains that were the only thing separating us from the Sunfire Desert.  It had been nine days since we had set off and I had recovered from my wound.  I was still a bit sore, but I felt that I had made a surprisingly fast recovery due to Nurse Night’s superior knowledge of medicine and Pearl’s constant care.  I was able to walk only four days after my injury and was now able to run again with only minor amounts of pain.  Nurse Night had begun teaching us how different medicines were to be prepared.  I began paying more attention to these things because I saw how interested Pearl was in such things and it made it much easier to begin conversations.  I figured that if I ever got hurt or sick while I was on a job, this knowledge just might save me. ‘How quickly have I transformed that I don’t even have a qualm about killing ponies anymore.  I’m not sure I like how Dead Eye has rubbed off on me.’ I thought.

Pearl had made great progress on my cloak over the past couple of days.  Our sense of wonder at the passing trees had passed and we now looked for new ways to keep ourselves entertained.  Pearl continually worked on my cloak and read some of the books about medicine that Nurse Night had given her and I read some of the war books that Dead Eye had brought along with him.  They were supposed to help me know what my enemies were doing if I was sent to spy and they were amassing an army.  Windstorm would often fly above us during the day to stretch his wings.  He was acting considerably nicer towards everypony in the camp after his little fit and I hoped that he kept it that way.

I had never seen mountains before in my life.  Considering I had never really left Bastion this wasn’t saying much, but I was completely astounded by the sheer magnitude of the rocks.  They towered above the forest and appeared to reach to the heavens.  The peaks were impossible to see as they were hidden from view by the sky.  We were going to pass through the mountain range by means of a cave that cut through two of the taller mountains.  The ponies from the Sunfire Desert that had visited the Resistance earlier had told them of the pass and that it had been wide enough for carts to pass through one at a time.  I was used to tight places after working as a thief in a guild for so long, but some of the pegasi seemed to be nervous about heading into a cave where they couldn’t see the sky overhead.  Windstorm decided to take a quick flight before we went into the cave for the rest of the day.  Pearl was wrapped up in one of the books that nurse Night had given her.  I decided to go for a quick run to stretch out my recovering fore hoof.  I ran through the forest and made sure to pay attention to hiding places.  After the assassination attempt, I realized that practicing the skills that Dead Eye had been pounding into my head could mean saving my life.  My fore hoof was feeling much better and I could run fine again.  I was feeling a bit nervous at the prospect of going into the cave.  I had never stayed inside during the day and it would be extremely unnerving for me to go an entire day without seeing the sun.  Darkness also made me nervous because that usually meant that it was time for the hood ponies to come out and rule the night.  I had been getting more used to the dark while training with Dead Eye, but the darkness still held plenty of surprises.  I arrived back at our caravan of carts about the same time that Windstorm did and we started our pass through the cave.

We had three unicorns leading us with their horns glowing.  The carts were arranged in a single file line with our cart located second only to the guard cart.  Everypony sat in a nervous silence as the last ray of natural light slipped behind a twist in the cave.

“So,’ Pearl said, breaking the silence, “What’s the plan once we reach the Sunfire Desert?”

“I will be going to see their king, Sandstorm” said Windstorm. “The king asked that I attend him alone so you two may do whatever you wish until I convince him to give us some troops to take with us.”

“I think that Dead Eye had some things that he wanted to show me when we arrived,” I said.  “So that leaves only you without something to do when we get there,” I said to Pearl.

I’ll see if I can get nurse Night to go with me to learn from one of the hospitals there,” said Pearl.  “I’ll also continue working on Surefire’s cloak.  Why do you need a cloak with all these pockets and dark colors anyway?” she asked.

“Umm… well Dead Eye says that I can keep more bolts in the pockets and have spare parts in case any of my weapons break,” I said, feeling like that was close enough to the truth but didn’t reveal anything about the Resistance’s Sharpshooters.

“But why do you need the cloak to be made of such a dark material?” she asked.

Before I had to make up another answer on the spot, a bump jolted our cart and we looked up at our surroundings.  To our surprise, the cave had greatly opened up from the narrow hallways we had been traversing.  The cave seemed to reach up hundreds of feet and there were massive stalagmites and stalactites that could have passed for small hills.  We were all shocked into awe at these unfamiliar formations and spent some time gawking at how massive this room was.  Near the middle of the cavern, the light from the unicorn’s horns weren’t enough to penetrate to the ceiling and gave me the impression that we were actually looking up at the dark night sky.  When we arrived at the opposite side of the cavern, we were all surprised to see that there was more than one possible exit from this cavern.  The guards had stopped in confusion and were now arguing over which path to take.  The ponies that had told us of this path had never mentioned these intersections.  We decided to look around the rest of the cavern to see if there was any scribbling on the wall that would tell us where we needed to go.  As we continued around the room, we began noticing more and more offshoots from this cavern.  Everypony decided it would be a good idea if we went back to the narrow tunnels that we had come from and take the offshoot directly opposite.  It made sense right?  If you’re travelling in the right direction, just keep heading in that direction and you’ll reach where you’re trying to go.  There was only a slight flaw in our plan.  When we headed back around, we could no longer tell which cave was the one that we had exited from.  Everything was beginning to look the same and nopony was certain where we had come from.  Safe to say, that everypony was beginning to be afraid.  We no longer had a plan for escaping our current predicament and no place to retreat to.  It’s unnerving to say the least and I could hear somepony in our caravan whimpering.

“Okay,” said nurse Night, taking control of the situation.  “Everypony calmly begin suggesting ideas of how we can get out of here.”

“Well we could go through one of the tunnels at random,” Dead Eye suggested.  “It would get us somewhere at least.”

“What if we get lost in that tunnel too?  We’re going to die here if we don’t get out and taking all of these tunnels is just going to waste all of our food.  There has to be a better way of going about this than just randomly walking through tunnels,” one of the guards said.

“We could mark off the tunnels that we have already been too,” I suggested.  “That way we don’t keep going in circles.  I honestly wouldn’t even mind going back from where we came as long as it meant that we would come back through prepared.”  A few ponies grunted in agreement with my statement and we felt like that would be a good idea no matter what we eventually decided to do.

“Why don’t we split up and everypony heads down a different tunnel,” Windstorm suggested.  “That way, we could cover more ground than if we all went down one tunnel.”

“Unfortunately,” said Dead Eye, “We can’t leave any pony alone.  What would we do if we lost somepony?  We would be in even more trouble than we are in know.”

Windstorm

“I have an idea,” Pearl said in a soft voice, obviously a bit nervous to be talking in front of so large a crowd.  What if we combined all of our ideas?  I mean Dead Eye’s idea is a bit wasteful but our best bet at the moment.  Windstorm’s idea is a spinoff of Dead Eye’s but much more risky.  Surefire had a good idea to mark off the tunnels that we passed through.  My suggestion is that we send four groups of three guards down each tunnel.  We would all wait here and they would report to us once they found something.  To make this less dangerous and more efficient, I suggest that we give each of the groups some rope that we can keep tied back here.  That way, they can easily find their way back or signal for help by tugging on their ropes.  That way we could also find them and it’s our best chance of finding our way out.”  After her explanation, she quickly fell silent and backed away from the center of the group where she had been standing.  She moved over to me and I gave her a reassuring hug to tell her that she had done well.

“Well I think we have a winner,” said nurse Night.  “Does anypony have a better suggestion or are we going to start working on getting ourselves out of here?”  When nopony said anything further, we began working on Pearl’s idea.

Everypony was soon in motion getting everything together that we would need to find our way out.  We got the ropes from the cooks that had been using it to string up any meat they were cooking.  The guards split themselves into groups and we were ready to begin.  Each of the three packs of guards would take one of the unicorns to light their way through the cave.  That meant that our camp would be left to wait upon them only by the light of a fire.  The only thing we had trouble in finding was a way to mark the caves that had already been traveled.  We had no chalk with us and so we began experimenting with different materials.  We could not find anything better than using a rock to make some scratches at the entrances to the paths.  The problem with this approach was that there were so many irregularities already in the cavern and it would be near impossible to determine if we had made the markings or if they had already been there or if we had made them.  Nurse Night came up with a solution to our problem by making some makeshift paint out of some of the berries that she had collected before we had reached the cave.

The guards set off into the tunnels with the ropes that we had attached to the spokes of one of the wagon wheels.  Everypony watched as the ropes bounced back and forth as the groups walked away from our camp.  An eerie silence passed over the camp and we watched for the slightest clue that somepony was in trouble.  The ropes seemed to bounce around consistently for another thirty minutes and I hoped that the rope didn’t run out before the guards could find something that would indicate that they were heading in the right direction.  We saw  one of the ropes begin to loosen up.  Nopony knew what to do and whether we should send a group down the passage after them.  The rope continued to loosen and tighten.  Somepony finally realized that they were returning and picking up the slack in the rope as they went.  The group of guards arrived fifteen minutes later and announced that their passage had been a dead end and nurse Night quickly went and marked the tunnel off with an X.

“Was there anything down there that we should know about?” asked nurse Night.

“Nope, just rock,” said the guard.  “Have any of the other groups come back?” asked another of the trio.

“No, you are the first to return,” said nurse Night.

“Not for long,” said Pearl, indicating one of the other ropes that was going slack and getting tight again.

“We’ll just wait until they come back,” said one of the guards.  “No point in going if they found the right way to go.

The next group arrived and brought similar news.  They, however, had found a decent sized sapphire while they had been spelunking.  It was nice, but it still didn’t help us get out of here.  We gave the two groups some more water and sent them off into two new tunnels.  The groups came and went and ponies were beginning to lose hope.

“Now now,” said nurse Night, with a cheerful voice.  “We’ve been through about a tenth of these tunnels already.  It may take some time, but we’ll get out of here.”  It was true that we were making good progress, but from all the time we had spent waiting it felt like we had already been stuck in here for days.  In truth we had spent only about five hours waiting, but when all your time is spent focused on one thing, time seemed to move at a grueling pace.  A few ponies had gone to sleep to avoid waiting for the groups to return with good news, only to be disappointed.  I spent the time waiting with Windstorm and Pearl.  Pearl was constantly worried for the guard’s safety and so Windstorm and I tried to assuage her.  We all cuddled close together and told stories that we remembered from our past.  This seemed to relieve her worries a bit and we all felt a bit better.  Some of the other ponies heard the stories that we were telling and decided to do the same.  This chain continued and everypony decided that we should gather around the fire and take turns telling stories from our past.  We went about in a circle and we listened to all different types of stories.  Some ponies told stories of adventures they had had as fillies and some told sad stories of lost love.  Some of the stories made people laugh and others caused us all to feel a bit of the misery that some ponies had endured during their life.  I told a comical story of one of the ponies in my guild that had accidently stored his stolen goods in a pig sty and he had come back to find that everything he had stolen had been covered in mud.  We had found him sifting through the muck to find his things.  He looked even less clean than the pigs that were in the sty with him and we had called him Pigface after that.

Windstorm told the story of how I had saved him from the hood ponies and everypony gave me a bit more respect for saving their king from those savage beasts.  Dead Eye told us about a time he had gone hunting and ended up shooting someone else’s kill before he realized that it had been dead.  This story brought roars of laughter from our group who had never known Dead Eye to ever admit that he had made a mistake.  Nurse Night told us a story about a time when she had given birth to her daughter and how she had almost lost her to a disease that had been raging throughout the Resistance.  We had almost completely gone around the circle and now it was Pearl’s turn to finish the round.  She was reluctant and tried to excuse herself by saying that she couldn’t remember anything from her past and couldn’t tell a decent story anyway.  Windstorm and I continued pushing her until she finally relented and decided to tell everypony about her experiences in the woods before we had met up with the Resistance.

“I’ll start my story when Surefire and I entered the Haunted Hollows to search for Windstorm and how we eventually ended up joining the camp,” said Pearl.  Her voice was stuttering a bit but it grew in confidence as she continued.  “After Surefire came to where I was waiting in the forest and told me what had happened with Windstorm, we decided that nothing could be done that night.  We lay down to sleep and were forced to lie close together to preserve the warmth.  I hoped that Windstorm wouldn’t freeze to death and I was glad that I had Surefire close beside me so that I wouldn’t lose sight of him too.  If I lost both Windstorm and Surefire, I don’t know what I would do.  The two of them are the only links I had from this new world I had found myself in and I was scared of what would happen if I lost those links.”

She took a deep breath and continued.  “The next morning we both woke up early so that we would have more time to look for Windstorm.  I wanted to head out immediately and look for him.  All rational thought had left my mind by this point and all I wanted was to get my other friend back.  Surefire reasoned with me and got me to search out a cave for us to stay in once we had found Windstorm and he went off to get us some food to eat.  I have to admit, I was nervous about leaving Surefire but he convinced me that everything would be okay.  When I was out there looking for the cave, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.  I spent about an hour wandering around until I stumbled upon a skeleton of some animal.  I broke into tears.  What if I found Surefire or Windstorm just like that; a pile of bones?  I got it together and assured myself that I was making myself worry more than I needed to.  I eventually found an outcropping and decided that that would provide us enough shelter for the night and so I went back to my meeting place with Surefire.  I knew I was early, but I hoped he would also come back early so that we could spend more time looking for Windstorm.  I waited and I waited, but Surefire never arrived.  After about two hours, I was in a state of frantic worry.  Should I go look for him or should I wait here?  Why was Surefire doing this to me?  He knew how much I was going to worry.  Surefire wandered back into the brush where we were meeting and I hit him across the face.  That wiped his stupid grin off of his face and began apologizing for being so late.  I was angry at him and refused to listen to him until I noticed that he was bloody.  I felt bad that I hadn’t even given him enough time to explain himself.  I patched him up and we went back to the alcove I found and he told me why he had been late, and then showed me how much food we now had.  I must have been acting like a complete freak, getting angry at him and then happy.  Anyway, after that we went hunting for Windstorm and came up with nothing we were both disappointed.  I spent the night thinking about what we would do if we didn’t find Windstorm, thoughts I really did not want to be thinking.  I fell into an uneasy sleep and was Surefire awoke me near Midnight and told me of a camp that he had found.  I thought that he was just pulling my leg and trying to cheer me up, but low and behold, he actually had found a camp, and with it, Windstorm.  I am so happy to have the two of them back.  Without them, where would I be right now?  Without Surefire I would probably be dead and Windstorm was always there to support me when I was recovering.  I hope we don’t get separated like that again.  It would be terrible to lose my two closest friends.” she concluded.

The other ponies all felt like they had just been one upped.  None of their stories had been quite so complex and exciting.  We were just deciding where who should start the next round of storytelling when we heard a group of guards come running back.  Everypony got ready just in case something nasty was following them.  We heard them hollering and it seemed that they were excited.  I guess we had finally gotten lucky and were going to get out of this cold damp place.  The guards came back yelling that they had done it.  They had seen the exit to the Sunfire Desert.  It was finally time to move on.  We got a couple of the stronger ponies to pull on the other two ropes to signal to the other groups to come back.  We saw the ropes begin to go slack and everypony began packing our things up and preparing to push forward.  Nurse Night used the last of her paint to mark the entrance to tunnel with lots of intricate designs and label the path “Desert”.  The other groups arrived a half hour later and we were ready to set off again, to brave the heat of the sun and hopefully turn the tides in the favor of the Resistance.