The Golden Trail

Moonstone swallowed thickly, Gold's piercing gaze unnerving her further and further by the second. Not helping was the death-like build the mare now carried. Over the long months since she had taken "ownership" of the mare, Gold had gone from a relatively healthy looking Earth Pony to a skeleton wearing a pony's skin and eyes. That, combined with the thousand mile stare and alien stillness gave Gold Vine a truly ghoulish appearance.

But it was her eyes that held her attention. They were as blank as her face, yet she could sense a destructive force hidden just behind them. Slowly, ever so slowly, she could swear she saw life coming into them. As it did, the air grew thicker with that same choking pressure.

While she was not a combatant, Moonstone was more than capable of handling herself when the situation called for it. Even then, while she hatted to admit it, she was scared of what Gold Vine had become. As much fun as it was to torment the mare, the sheer amount of damage her body could recover from was terrifying. Had the assassin been allowed to remain a Unicorn, there was no telling what kind of damage she could've done.

But she isn't a Unicorn anymore, she thought, a small smile forming in her muzzle as some of her confidence returned. She's just a useless Mud Pony now.

No sooner had her smile appeared before it vanished as another wave of primal fear tore through her. Gold Vine's eyes shined with a rage she had never seen before as her face contorted into a hideous snarl. Something wasn't right. Why was this Mud Pony's glare affecting her like this? What did she have to fear? She was a Unicorn while Gold Vine was a useless Mud Pony. She held the power. So why was she filled with such dread?

The answer came as some movement tore Moonstone's eyes away from Gold's to the other mare's back. Eight things moved under Gold's skin, each about as thick as a strand of hiking rope and slithering under the golden coated skin like snakes. Suddenly, Gold let out a furious pained wail as the things tore out of her back. Eight vines lashed furiously from where they sprouted on Gold's back, each covered with two inch metallic thorns and her blood. Moonstone had barely enough time to put up a red magic barrier before the vines swung at her, said barrier sporting new spider cracks with each lashing it took. Gold stayed in the same place she had since this whole thing started, a roaring wail of primal fury flying past her chapped lips as her newly grown weapons attacked her tormentor. Moonstone tried to call for help, but taking her attention away from her barrier for more than a second was suicide. As she focused on repairing as much of her crumbling protection, she racked her brain for a way out of this disaster. If only she hadn't been so foolish as to reject her father's attempts at teaching her how to teleport.

Meanwhile, what little of Gold Vine's mind that was still intact could see that this was not going anywhere. With a simple command, the vines stopped lashing. Instead, they coiled around the red dome like a mass of spiked snakes closing in on their prey.

cRuSh.....HeR...

The end was not slow, nor was it gentle. Putting everything they had into it, the vines crushed Moonstone's barrier and grabbed her tight. She screamed as the thorns stabbed into her from every angle while the vines themselves tried to squeeze the life out of her. She let out a strangled scream, the pain of the thorns and the sheer power of the vines far too much for her to handle. The scream added to Gold's rage, the mare's pain bringing her no pleasure due entirely to the fact that it was her screams. Everything about the mare in her clutches filled her with a searing hatred. Her coat. Her mane. Her face. Her horn.

Gold let out a furious scream as she willed the vines into further action, the plants lifting Moonstone off of the ground. Moonstone barely knew what was happening before she was slammed head first into one of the room's solid stone walls. The blow dazed her, but that wasn't enough to numb her to the pain from a second slam. Then a third. A fourth. By the seventh hit, she had already lost consciousness and hung limply in Gold's grip. Gold wanted to slam her again, she wanted to do it as many times as it would take to make the mare's filthy head cave in, but her vines refused to listen to her. Instead, she let out a furious roar as she threw her onto the ground. A hint of satisfaction settled into her heart when she saw the deep cracks that covered Moonstone's horn. The pain she would be forced to endure when she woke up would be excruciating, tripling every time she tried to cast any kind of spell until the horn eventually healed.

Leaving the mare to suffer, Gold staggered out of the room for the first time. She found herself in a dark stone hallway, enchanted crystal torches providing what little light they could. From them, she saw that the hall was lined with identical doors to the one leading to her now former cell. Not wanting to stay any longer than she needed to, she ignored them as she made her way down the hall. As she walked, her vines coiled around her like a cluster of snakes defending their nest. Her rage was far from sated, a red tint still clouding her vision as her magic pulsed angrily in her veins and newly grown weapons.

A shout from ahead of her drew her attention to a trio of Unicorns, each wearing suits and spells at the ready on their now glowing horns. Her vines were as fast as demons, each grabbing a stallion and slamming their head into the ground in a fraction of a thought from their mistress. Acting on pure instinct, she felt the thorns on her vines pull something from the stallions into her. She let them continue, slowly feeling some of her strength returning while the stallions in her grip gradually withered. When the flow of energy stopped, the stallions looked as if they hadn't eaten in days while Gold looked far more healthy. She wanted to drain more, but like with Moonstone, her magic refused to let her do so. With an irate huff, she used her newly acquired vigor to run through the hall.

A small smile grew on her muzzle as she felt the wind through her ratty mane and tail. Never before had she felt so alive, so free, then she had at that moment. In time, she came to the end of the tunnel, a wooden door cutting her off from the rest of the world. She let out a feral cry as she willed the vines to attack, the spiky appendages smashing down the door with ease. The light beyond staggered her for a moment, but she didn't stop running until she made it across the threshold.

Her eyes barely had time to adjust to the change of lighting before more of Moonstone's underlings closed in on her, her ears picking up the hoofsteps of at least ten stallions. She wasted no time sicking her vines on the poor souls, screams of pain and hard thuds surrounding her from all sides as she blinked the stars out of her eyes. Her right foreleg buckled under her for a second before whatever happened to it was healed. Now able to see, she found herself in what was once a very well decorated hallway. Dented and destroyed pieces of armor laid all across a purple marble floor with high rectangular windows lining the left half of the hall with wooden doors lining the right. Several suits of ornate silver armor stood guard on either side of each window, the only exceptions being the ones guarded by mangled piles of metal. Laying all across the floor in various states of pain were nine black-suited Unicorn stallions, all alive and not getting back up anytime soon. One stallion remained standing, his suit covered with rips and blood as he stared Gold down. His teal coat and emerald mane and tail were stained with his own blood as his lavender eyes locked with her orange ones. Gold let out a feral snarl, her vines lashing violently around her in response to her rage. The stallion responded by channeling his magic, the lavender glow adding fear to Gold's rage. That fear quickly turned into hate as memories of what she had went through ran through her head. Her primal mind knew that this pony wanted to catch her, to put her back into her cell. He wanted to hurt her.

Her magic surged into the vines, her rage making the thorns double in size as she let out a bestial roar that echoed through the whole mansion. The stallion fired a barrage of magic beams at Gold, just like he had earlier when she was still blinded. The beams tore through her, some of them blasting large bloody holes into her head and chest, but she didn't go down. Instead, the wounds quickly healed as she leveled eyes that glowed orange with rage before a mass of vines lashed out at him. He had just enough time to put up the same kind of barrier that saved him from the mare's first assault, but the newly lengthened thorns ripped it to shreds before the vines themselves slammed him into a wall. When Gold's vine pulled itself free from the stallion's body, he slumped to the ground, blood forming a small puddle below him. She barely looked at him before she resumed her run.

As she ran through the mansion, countless ponies fell to the wrath of her vines. Guards, maids, anypony foolish enough to impede her escape. While she wanted to, she never landed a fatal blow to her attackers. Her magic, no, her body refused to let her land that kind of blow. This was a fact that became more apparent to her as her mind slowly slid out of its rage-induced mania. By the time she had regained her senses, she had siphoned enough energy from her opponents to fill herself back out, now only looking drained as opposed to a walking skeleton in a sack.

By that point, the staff had learned to avoid her, some of the ones less informed about the mansion's dark secrets likely going to The Guard to try and get help.

That was fine by her. While she didn't like the idea of going to the dungeons, she knew that the Princesses' treatment of her would be far more merciful than what Moonstone had put her through. As she wandered further throughout the mansion, a strange sensation made her pause. She felt a kind of draw towards a particular room in the hall she was in, a pull that resonated with her in a way that felt almost intimate. Seeing little reason to fight against it, she followed it and entered the room. She was greeted by a study, tall bookshelves lining the sides with an ornate massive balcony window set into the wall behind a finely crafted oak desk standing across from her. It all barely held her attention compared to what stood at the room's center. In a large glass case stood the very bones Moonstone Dagger pulled out of her still-breathing body, the ratty blanket Gold found the night she was taken draped over it like a frayed gray cloak. Furious, Gold yelled as she swung a vine at the case, shattering the glass and scattering the bones. Looking around, she noticed a large black bag laying in a corner of the room, no doubt the same bag Moonstone used to bring the bones to the room. Her guess was proven right as she was easily able to store them in it with little effort.

She refused to leave any part of her in that twisted mare's ownership, even taking the blanket and draping it over her head as she slid the large saddlebag onto her barrel. As she did that, a wave of weariness washed over her and the vines fell off of her back. Before her very eyes, the plants shriveled up before they turned into dust on the ground. She sighed at the loss, even curious as to how such a change had occurred in the first place, but she pushed it to the back of her mind as she turned to make her leave.

Five minutes after she found the way out of the mansion, a swarm of guards had indeed entered the mansion. While they had been sent there to deal with a monster, the one they found was not the one they had been expecting. The tunnel was found, as were the torture chambers and equipment that it housed. When Moonstone and her servants were taken into custody, one servant in particular was brought to the hospital with multiple puncture wounds on his left side. All the way to the hospital he told anypony who would listen about the monstrous mare that ripped through the mansion. A monster that the papers would call "The Deathless Mare" for many days to come.

***

The night air was cool against her coat as Gold trekked onward, the chirping of crickets and the crunch of dried leaves under her hooves the only company she had as she marched. Getting out of the city had been easy enough, her body's unfortunate attributes providing her with a swift, yet agonizing way to get off of the mountain and into the forest floor below. At least she was knocked out when she hit the ground, her body having fully repaired itself by the time she had regained consciousness.

I hope I won't have to resort to such measures in the future, she thought, slumping against a tree to catch her breath. At least it helped confirm that this is all indeed real.

A thought that brought a tired smile to her muzzle as she waited for her body to recover. While they were largely random, her hallucinations had one factor in common; when she "died" in them, she came back to reality. The fact that she was still at the bottom of Canterlot Mountain with a dried pool of her own blood surrounding her when she awakened earlier filled her with so much joy that she cried. Even now, the fact that she was free brought a happy tear to her eye.

Feeling a bit better, she adjusted her saddlebags and her makeshift cloak and resumed her march. As she did so, she wondered how long she had been captured. Before Moonstone found her, it was in the middle of winter, but the way the night air felt was as if it was the middle of summer. It wasn't something she was willing to complain about all that much. She hated the cold and her journey would've been much more difficult in the snow anyways. It still unnerved her that she had been at somepony's mercy for such an unbelievably long time.

That led her to a question that made her pause; where did she go now? She had nothing waiting for her in Canterlot beyond the wrath of what was left of the Stone Family. Even if that wasn't the case, a Mud Pony like her could never survive there. That being said, she didn't know of any places outside the mountain's perimeter that could take her in. As much as she hated to admit it, Canterlot had been her whole world. She never took any jobs from Mud Ponies or Cloud-trotters and the black market kept a lot of their business within the city limits.

Gold let out a frustrated groan as she resumed her march. At the moment, it didn't matter where she went. All that mattered was getting as far away from Canterlot as equinely possible before any Stones found her. At the very least, until she could figure out how she managed to grow vines out of her back. The ten days she spent on the road since her escape from the city had been thankfully void of any need for them, but it would do her some good to solve that riddle as quickly as possible.

A dull fog started to settle over her mind, slowing her march until she came to a complete stop. Her body teetered as a new sensation washed over her. It was similar to the "tug" she felt that guided her towards her bones, only this one was much stronger. It also felt less demanding, more like somepony gently encouraging somepony into joining them. It felt warm, something Gold Vine hadn't felt in several long years.

Gold let the force pull her towards it, her weariness gradually becoming more apparent to her as she moved. The days and nights of travel had been cruel to her, but not as cruel as the nightmares that plagued her. Every night, her dreams would take her back to her cell and the pain she endured. It left her waking screaming and never with a full night's sleep, sapping her of the strength she needed to move. That combined with the meager meals she could scavenge from her surroundings took a heavy toll on her.

Slowly, the forest gave way to an open field, then to apple and pear trees as she continued to follow the siren call of the force guiding her. Her hooves ached, her back was sore, and her head was drooping under its own weight, but she pushed herself even further. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew that sanctuary stood at the end of this pull. She pushed herself for as long as she could, the trees becoming denser and denser with each step. Her vision blurred as exhaustion started to claim her, the pull gradually getting weaker as she closed in on a massive brown blur. When the pull finally stopped, she collapsed in front of the thing that drew her to it and let herself drift off to sleep. A pair of trees wrapped together in an eternal embrace towered over her, one growing apples while the other held pears in its branches.