The Final Element: The Guardian of Equestria

The Eighth Chapter

After more than two hours spent looking for the cylinder shaped key, Eli was forced to admit total defeat. It wasn't a defeat that he wanted to willingly admit to, but under the circumstances he didn't have the luxury of waiting, and searching.

“Hadn't some-pony better give Twilight a shout?” Applejack asked, as she picked at the residual dried mud still clinging to her mane.

“I suppose so,” he said. “But first, it might be a good idea if we get out of this canyon, and back on the right path.” Turning to Rainbow Dash, “Any ideas?”

“I can fly Applejack and Pinkie up to the other side,” she told him, as she paced around them. “But you look a tad heavy. I doubt my strength will hold out long enough to reach the top with you.”

Thinking it over for a few moments, Eli snapped his finger. “What about getting more of that vine you used to trip the Ursas?”

“What about it?”

“You get me enough of that, and I can climb out on my own,” he said. “I've done it a thousand times.”

“I don't know,” Dash said, giving Eli a quizzical look. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, probably.”

~   ~   ~

The digging in Ponyville was going about as well as Twilight had hoped, they had made good progress, despite the fact that many of them had never before worked a shovel in their lives.

“Ugh, this is without a doubt the worst thing you've ever asked me to do, Twilight Sparkle!” Rarity said, as she rested her shovel beside a growing pile of dirt, and used her magic to run a delicately embroidered handkerchief across her forehead.

“Worse than the time you got covered in sap and branches, when that tree crashed through the library window?”

“Oh, it's a thousand times worse than that.”

“I don't mind digging,” Fluttershy said, popping her head up from the hole next to Rarity.

“That may be, but you have your creature friends to help you,” Rarity said, pointing down into the hole, where several squirrels, and badgers were busy clawing away at the soil. “I on the other-hoof have to resort to manual labor!”

“I'm sorry, Rarity,” said Fluttershy, as she brought her head down sheepishly.

“I don't want you to be sorry,” Rarity said in exasperation. “I want you to be sorry!”

Twilight was just about to sternly rebuke her friend, for her attitude, when the sound-stone around her neck called her name. It was Rainbow Dash's voice.

“I'm here,” she said, as she gave Rarity a glare.

“We just wanted to let you know what was up.” Twilight could hear the sounds of grunting and straining through the magically enchanted stone, and to her it sounded like Eli.

“Is everything okay there?” she said.

“For the love of god, someone give me a hand here!”

“I ain't got no hand pardner, but I can give you a hoof.”

More grunting, followed by Pinkie Pie. “Ooh, I have two hooves, no wait, make that four!”

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight shouted into the stone's surface. “Is everything okay there?”

“Oh, sorry, my bad,” she said with a chuckle. “We sort of ran into a couple of problems.”

Walking away from the dig site, Twilight glanced around to make sure that no-pony else heard too much if it was bad news. “What kind of problems?”

“The Ursa kind!” came Eli's voice through the stone.

“Ursa?” Twilight said. “You met an Ursa?”

“We didn't just meet one, we met a whole cave full, and sort of got tossed down into a canyon.” Eli was panting hard as he spoke.

“Is every-pony alright?”

“Just some scrapes and bruises,” Eli said. “That's not the worst of it though.”

“What could be worse than running into a bunch of Ursas?”

“When we fell, I lost the key.”

“Oh, no.” Bringing the sound-stone down a little, Twilight looked around once more to make sure that she was the only one who heard that.

“Tell only who you have to,” said Eli.

“What are you going to do?”

“Complete the objective,” he said. “With the key, or without the key, I still have to find the gate, and determine the situation. Nothing has changed, except now, if an opportunity arises to shut it, I can't.”

There was a long pause, as no one spoke, each of them allowing the gravity of the news to cycle through their minds. Twilight wanted to believe that Eli was capable of pulling through, but without the key, it was massive hurdle.

“How is the excavation going?” Eli asked. Twilight could hear the exhaustion in his voice.

“We haven't found anything;” she said, “but we are on schedule, at least.”

“Hey.”

“Yes?” Twilight whispered.

“With the key, or without it, we're going to stop them. Whether it's with magic, or force, or something; we will stop them.” A moment later the stone fell silent, and Twilight knew that her friends had gone.

It was not in Twilight's nature to deliberately hide anything from Princess Celestia, but she reasoned with herself that it was too early to begin reporting bad news. Still, she knew that eventually the Princesses would need to know that the key was missing, everything depended on it, and now, it seemed that everything depended on her efforts, and those of the ponies in Ponyville.

“Well, that's certainly not pressure!” Twilight shouted abruptly at the sound-stone, causing her friends to look over at her.

“Is everything alright, Dear?” Rarity came up beside her and put a hoof on her shoulder.

Twilight stood there for a few moments, not speaking, only thinking about the future, and the past, and everything that had happened in such a short time.

Looking up at Rarity, and then at Fluttershy as she came over to them, Twilight said, “No. Everything is not alright.”

~   ~   ~

With the map once again in his hands, Eli stood in a small clearing getting his bearings. He checked the compass that Big Mack had given him against his heading, and decided that they were in fact going the right direction. The only issue now, was the matter of the time it would take to reach their destination.

“Okay,” Eli said, tucking the compass and map back in to the sack, “we're all set, again. If we just keep heading in this . . .”

Before Eli could finish what he was about to say, that is, that if they kept heading in the direction they were on, they would make up their time lost before night-fall—a loud boom, and whistling noise began to emanate from the middle of Everfree Forest, much the way it had prior to his arrival, and the three ponies with him, began to look up toward the sky in horror.

Holding his hands over his ears, Eli shouted, “What the hell is that noise?”

“It's not good!” Rainbow Dash yelled back, holding her hooves over her head.

Applejack was hugging the nearest tree by the clearing, while Pinkie Pie ran in circles shouting as loud as she could, to match the same pitch as the shrieking noise. Eli contemplated joining her, but running and shouting with insanity at the noise.

“It's about to get bad!” Rainbow screamed in the direction of Eli's ear, while trying to wrap her mane around her ears, to muffle sound further.

“Nothing can get much worse than this!”

The beam of light that erupted from the forest, brought with it a similar trembling, and earthquake as the time before, and Eli felt his teeth start chattering together from the vibration racking his whole body.

Looking up as best he could through the canopy of the forest, he watched as the shaft exploded outward, and spread out in a disc shape rift, causing the trees of the forest to sway harshly outward from the center of the light shaft. For the strangest of reasons, Eli couldn't help but be reminded of a smashed nuclear warhead going off, except flat like a pancake, and without the distinctive mushroom plume, and less  heat.

When the blast subsided, Eli rubbed at his ears, and called out to his friends. Applejack and Pinkie Pie emerged from the edge of the clearing as Rainbow Dash struggled to undo her knotted mane from around her head. There was something at least positive about the blast, Eli noted as he reached in the bag and brought out the map once more; and if he was right, it would take them straight to the gate.

“Hey Dash, can you do us a favor, and fly up above the treeline, and see if you can get a fix on where that blast came from?”

“Yeah, no sweat,” she said, as she crouched down ready to blast off from the ground, only to catch her stomach with her hooves, and double over in agony.

Eli watched as she fell to her side, and clutched her belly, and let loose a few hissed curses. Behind him he heard both Pinkie and Applejack begin groaning in discomfort, and for several seconds, he watched as all three of the ponies dropped to the ground and began shrieking.

Going first to Dash, Eli knelt down beside her and pressed his hand to her stomach, asking if she was alright.

“It feels like a heard of buffalo are charging across my guts!” She was gritting her teeth, and Eli noticed a discernible sheen of sweat break out on her face and muzzle.

“It wasn't like this before,” said Applejack, as she did her best to crawl over to where Eli and Rainbow Dash were at. She was sweating hard against the gut-clenching pain, and Eli knew that whatever it was, it was certainly something to do with the portal. Though try as he might, there was nothing in his father's stories that mentioned this, nothing to give him a clue as to what was happening to the ponies.

Oh God! He realized that these were not the only ponies in the world. Right now, everyone in Ponyville was probably experiencing the same thing. He ran a free hand across his own stomach to be sure he wasn't suffering a pang of discomfort, but he couldn't say the same about the rest of them in Ponyville and even Canterlot.

He didn't want to think about it, right now, he could do nothing for them, he was here, and Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie were his first concern.

“It's going to be alright,” he said, as he reached down to stroke Applejack's mane. “Somehow, it'll be okay.”

Beside them Pinkie started crying, and Eli fought hard against panicking. Hysterics were for solders with arms and legs blown off in combat, and office administrators that didn't get their spreadsheets on time. This was of course nothing like that, it was magical, or mechanical, or even supernatural; there was no real basis of reference, and try as he might, for the next half hour, all he could do was sit in the clearing, cradling the three of them in his arms, as they languished under the affliction, with which they were besieged.

Another ten minutes passed, and neither of the ponies seemed to be doing much better, though to Eli's relief, it seemed that they were at least able to bear up under the discomfort. He had already taken his jacket that Rarity had made for him, and draped it over the three ponies, as best he could; he knew that individuals in pain were prone to physical shock, and the last he needed was ponies beginning to convulse on him.

“Is this the change . . . is it happening?” Applejack's voice sounded fluttery, no doubt she was using all of her strength to suppress the pain.

Applejack's little sister suddenly came to his mind, as he looked down. What was her name again? Apple Bloom. Yes, that was it. A clear picture of the little filly suddenly writhing in agony, and Eli fought hard to keep from screaming out in anger and frustration. “I don't know.”

“Hey.” Rainbow Dash's voice was barely a whisper as she looked up at him, with watery eyes. He reached down and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, acknowledging to her that he was still with her. “Can you please talk about something?”

His head suddenly filled with a million and one things, that had little or no relevance to the even at hand. Dammit! Why was it so hard to concentrate beyond warfare, strategy and combat? He could recount to her a thousand and one ways to execute a night drop into enemy territory, and secure a living person, but when asked to just talk, his mind went blank.

“I don't know what to say,” he said, looking down. He could feel their small bodies trembling and tensing sporadically, as they each underwent their own private hell. “I'm not good at telling stories.”

“Please . . . anything.”

Closing his eyes, Eli let his mind relax, it didn't matter what they heard, as long as they heard something. And that something was Kosovo. He didn't even know why it had popped in his mind. He hadn't thought about it for over a decade, still, Kosovo was easy to remember.

“Okay,” he said as he brought his sound stone up beside him. There was still time. If they got worse, then he would have to call for help, if there any help to be had.

“About ten years ago, my team was given an assignment in a place called, Kosovo. It's this province of Surbia. The thing was, the RUSBDE  had caught a guy at the boarder crossing with a gun, and notebook with coordinates to a location. LCE determined that it was a facility of some sort, and then all hell broke loose.

“KFOR soldiers took the guy to a Russian compound and interrogated him until he squawked. It was just as everyone had suspected; a terrorist training camp. Well, as soon as Washington found out about it, we were scrambled, and my team was shot over there. We would do a high altitude jump, and land in to rendezvous with the LCE and the KFOR, my team breaching, and the KFOR and LCE providing extra cover, though we all knew the LCE wanted to be the ones to take credit for the capture since it was their guys that caught the informant.

“Turns out that the training camp was about forty miles from the Surbian boarder, in a place called Vela Glava Valley, and it was a gold mine. They had everything from entrenched weapon systems to mortar pits, and more than thirty terrorist members.

“My team and I were to maintain a cover at the wood-line, and wait for the patrols to come around, and then eliminate them. We used sound suppression assault rifles, and took out the first four men, but a lucky bastard managed to squeeze off a warning shot, and for the next half hour it rained bullets.

“As soon as the KFOR moved in they took fire, and we did our best to cover them, but between the LCE and RUSBAT, and all the shit that was being thrown our way, we didn't get much of a chance. I took my second bullet in that firefight. But we got the bad guys. Nine prisoners were taken, out of thirty, seven of them didn't even have a scratch on them.

“It's funny,” Eli said. “There I was standing in the middle of another country, a bullet hole in my arm, muddy, in pain, and those guys that had been caught . . . they just looked at me, and never said a word. They didn't look angry, or surprised that they were taken, just passive, almost at peace with it.”

While he had been speaking, the pain had subsided enough that Applejack and Pinkie Pie had fallen asleep. Eli gently nudged them, and brought his ear down to listen to their breathing from their noses. It was a start, at least.

Moving beside him, ever-so-slightly, Rainbow Dash, turned to look up at him, she had stopped tensing, and was finally relaxing. Her eyes were looking deep into his, and he knew she wanted to say something. Instead, she smiled and closed her eyes, allowing herself to finally give in to the comfort of sleep.

~   ~   ~

Two hours later, Eli opened his eyes to the sound of Twilight Sparkle calling his name. His arms were covered by warmth, and he only vaguely remembered that he had moved the girls to the edge of the forest, and made a camp for them to rest.

“Eli?”

Her voice sounded so soothing to him, it was almost as if she were standing over him. But that wasn't right. She was back in Ponyville, and he was in the middle of the forest. Then he remembered the stone, somewhere to the left of him, where he currently lay, with three sleeping ponies curled in various positions around and on him.

Pulling his arm out from under a heavily breathing Pinkie Pie, Eli rolled over and clutched at the stone, and brought it to his mouth. “I'm here. Are you okay?”

“We're alive.” She sounded groggy. No doubt about it, she must have underwent the same experience. “I sent a letter to Princess Celestia, but I haven't heard from her.”

“Was it bad?”

“For some of us, it was worse. The children were spared most of it.”

Thank God. Eli, felt relief, at hearing that. Though, now there were more questions, and more answers would be needed that he didn't have.

“How are the girls doing?” Taking that to mean the three sleeping ponies around him, Eli rolled back and gave them a quick once over. “They're fine. Sleeping it off. It hit them pretty hard, they seemed to have been in terrible pain, and it lasted for over an hour. But they're okay now.”

“Really, pain?” Twilight's voice betrayed her surprise, and Eli knew that what Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie experienced, were obviously more intense than Ponyville's ponies. “All we had here was some stomach cramps and nausea.”

“It's this place,” Eli said. “Proximity to the gate, or the strangeness of the forest, something. I won't be sad when we get out of here.”

“What are you going to do? Princess Luna will be raising the moon in about three hours.”

He hadn't figured on being detained by Ursas, and pain inducing blasts of light from the sky, but all good commanders planned for Murphy's Law. The one constant in the universe, set into motion to deliberately fuck with someone's well planned day.

“I don't see any point in pressing on today.” There was little he could do, unless he left them there, and that wasn't going to happen. All he had to do was look down at their sleeping faces to know that he was destined to stay with them until the end of this adventure. “We'll just stay here for the night. The girls need their rest, and I need to come up with some sort of contingency plan in case Murphy's Law decides to show up again.”

There was silence from the stone as Twilight thought about it all. “What's Murphy's Law?”

“You know those days where everything goes wrong all at once?”

For Twilight she could count at least a dozen in the past year. “Uh-huh,” she said, hesitantly.

“Well, you can blame Murphy for it.”

~   ~   ~

“Father!” Princess Luna awoke with a start, her forearm off of her bed, reaching up as if to grasp at some object that mere moments ago existed, yet now vanished. It was a dream. Nothing more.

Letting her arm fall back down, she rested it on her forehead, as she allowed her eyes to adjust to the light pouring in the windows of her bed chambers. Her alarm clock had not rang. She hated waking early. Why couldn't she remember the dream? Whose face was she seeing?

Why bother. It was useless to ponder on the past. Days and days, and still more days would merge together, endlessly, and when enough days were gone by, there was always the next. Dreams had their place, and it was not in her waking thoughts. There were more important things to do.

She laid there until the alarm-clock began to clatter loudly beside her on her night stand. Infernal contraption. She only selected it, because few clocks were loud enough to pull her from her sleep, and this one wasn't just loud, it was horrifyingly loud.

Using her powers of manipulation she forced the clock silent, and removed herself from her bed one leg at a time, and allowed the evening air to caress her lower form. First thing she was going to do was find herself a strong cup of coffee, and take a walk, while there was still a few moments before raising the moon.

Nothing was more distracting than the terrible stomach pains she felt during her daytime sleeping, and then Celestia barging in her room, and going on about the shaft of light again. Between her sister, the stomach pains, the dreams, and the damned clock, she was going to need coffee strong enough to kill a timber-wolf.

Sliding her hooves across the stone floor of her bedroom, Luna made for her personal lavatory, and caught a glimpse of her haggard complexion in the ornate mirror, before she backed up to the toilet, and relaxed her haunches against it.

Pony toilets being what they were, they were not like any contrivance of humans, so that while certain functions required a human to actually sit upon the toilet, or stand, depending on the gender; for ponies, the piece of plumbing was designed so that they neither had to sit, or face it. They merely back up against the device, and pressed their back ends to the padded oval orifice, and did their business. Which brings us back to Princess Luna, who was right in the very middle of doing her business, when she noticed something most odd about the shadows on the floor of her lavatory.

To an untrained eye, the shadows meant nothing. But to Luna, who was not only a magical creature, and the presiding ruler of the night, the most subtle of motions involving her moon was as discernible as an off note to a composer.

Giving just enough attention to the washing of her hooves, and the cleansing of her teeth, Luna fought hard against a growing surging panic in her stomach. Why was this happening now? She felt her old claustrophobia begin to swell in her thoughts, and forced back the sensation of the walls around her moving.

Stepping from her chambers, she passed her guards, and made for the kitchen, where she was sure Celestia had prepared her breakfast despite the hundreds of times she voiced her disgust at eating within mere minutes of waking. Glanced back over her shoulder she heard the familiar tones of her guards falling into trot behind her, and she moved her muzzle forward with a determined look, making every caution to keep from glancing sidelong at the windows of the palace.

“You can wait out here,” she told her guards, though not turning to face them, and used her magic to close the doors of the dining hall behind her.

“You're up earlier than usual, little sister.” Celestia's voice was even, and deliberate. “Finally come to have some food?”

“No, I haven't,” she said as she walked through the doorway of the dining hall into the kitchen area, where Celestia and two other palace workers were making busy. Right now all she could think about was finding the coffee pot and drinking a cup as fast as she could. “I'll just have coffee.”

“Now sister,” said Celestia, as she turned from her preparations to regard Luna, “you know that the first meal is . . .”

“. . . the most important meal,” Luna finished for her. “Yes, I know, you do not fail to instruct me each and every morning.”

There is was. Luna could tell in the way that Celestia was regarding her that she knew something was wrong. Celestia had a keen sense of knowing, and Luna could only watch as she came face to face with her older sister.

“Luna, what?”

Looking past her sister, Luna told the two palace workers to leave the kitchen. “And close the door behind you.”

As soon as Celestia heard the door close, she repeated her question, to which Luna merely allowed her gaze to drift to the windows to their left, and beyond into the evening world of Equestria. “Things are very wrong, sister.”

Following Luna's eyes, Celestia turned her head to see what it was that was worrying her sister, when she instinctively almost immediately understood; it was beyond imagination, and all reason, but it was there staring her in the face non the less.

“The moon!” she cried, as she moved to the window.

“Sister,” Luna said with a quiver of fear to her voice, “what are we going to do?”

~   ~   ~

The night had been relentless, and Eli wasn't able to rest as much as he would have liked, though he was sure the others weren't faring much better than himself. Even if he was a former Special Forces commander, and capable of withstanding this sort of hostile environment for weeks on end, he was sure the girls were not going to last under the same rigors for the same duration.

Rainbow Dash looked as if she hadn't seen civilization in a month, and Pinkie Pie was beginning to wane under the monotony of the walking. The only one that seemed even remotely at home, or didn't appear as fatigued as the rest of them was, Applejack. Though Eli wondered how it was that she could maintain her same usual outward attitude despite the fact that they had been two full days in Everfree forest, and had been chased by Ursas, nearly plunged to their deaths, and then had some sort of physical attack due to an otherworldly beam of light.

“Something on your mind, partner?” Applejack asked him, bringing him out of his thoughts. She smiled broadly from under her cowboy hat, as he walked beside her.

“I was just thinking,” he said.

“Oh yeah, 'bout what?”

“You.” Eli watched her get nervous, as she glanced around.

“Was I doing sumpthin' I wasn't 'spose to?”

Eli laughed out loud, and waved his hand back and forth in front of his face. “I was just thinking, that you seemed pretty comfortable here in the woods.”

“Oh,” she said, finally understanding why he had thought it was funny. “Well, I reckon so. I've been used to roughin' it since I was no higher than a coon-squirrel to a cornstalk.”

“I guess that means you'd be out of place in some big city like New York, huh?”

“Is it some fancy big place?” she asked.

“It's the largest city in America, it has a population of well over eight million people.”

Applejack gave a long whistle. “That's a bunch of y'all ain't it?”

Yes,” he said. “But New York is just one city in a whole state of others.”

“What's all that mean?”

“Hmm, well, you know how this country is called Equestria, right? Well, my country is called The United States of America, or America, or The U.S.”

Applejack thought about that for a moment, and wrinkled her nose. “What's a state?”

“It's a mapped off area of cities and towns.” He was trying to put it in language that he figured she would more easily understand, but he had to wonder it was taking.

“Huh,” she said, “you don't say. Well, the biggest place I know of, is prob'ly Manehattan. It's 'bout as big as I could handle.”

“Manehattan,” he said stopping to look at her, which caused the others to stop behind him. “You have a city named Manehattan here?”

“Shore do,” Applejack said beaming with pride. “It's North-East of Canterlot, and it's high-class out the wazoo.”

“What's the deal?” Rainbow Dash said as she stood behind him, staring. “You want to suddenly go to Manehattan?”

“No,” he said. “It's just that in my world, there is a place called Manhattan, and it's in New York City; it's one of its five boroughs.”

“Burrow?” Applejack said, looking as confused as ever. “Like a hole in the ground?”

“Not exactly, no.” Eli rubbed his chin, and thought of the best way to explain it to them. “It's like one of five smaller cities that became a larger, much larger city, but get to keep their identity.”

“Is that so?” Applejack looked as if she were trying to comprehend it, but was obviously lacking a common frame of reference. “And there's five of 'em?”

“Yeah, Queens, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island. Any of those others sound familiar?”

Rainbow Dash just shook her head. “Can't say they do.”

“It's like this is some bizarre pony version of my own world,” Eli said, as he resumed walking.

It was a damn strange coincidence. Eli knew that there were many similarities in this world and his own Earth, but the more he learned, the more he was genuinely disturbed and troubled. Things were mirrored at times, but in a odd sort of mirroring, as if they were imitation of things he knew, or alternate variations.

Above all that though, his newest concern was on a higher level, as he walked and continuously checked the sky. It wasn't until he absentmindedly looked up to get his bearings with the sun, that he realized what exactly it was that was troubling him.

It didn't take long before Rainbow Dash noticed it as well. She trotted up in front of Eli and pointed a hoof up at the sky, noting the shadows on the trees. “Is it just me, or is there something wrong with the sun?”

All together the three others stopped, and looked up at the sky above them, looking at the position of the sun, as it seemed to be in a place in the sky at an angle instead of being straight up in its usual noon position.

“No, it's not just you,” Eli said, carefully trying to determine the speed in which the sun had moved along the sky. “I've been watching it do that all day.”

“Wait, the sun is moving?” Applejack sounded skeptical.

“It seems to be.”

“What does that mean?” asked Rainbow, looking worried as she continued to stare.

“It means that this world is starting to change, sooner than I thought.”

“At this rate it looks as if it'll be dark in a few hours.” Applejack watched Eli for a sign of reassurance, but he just met her gaze with his own uncertain expression.

Too bad this wasn't Panama, then at least if he were running interference against a group of gun-runners, he'd have a linear and stable mission, and nothing that was going to get as derailed as this assignment has been since the moment they left Ponyville.

“Ooh, does this mean we get to make a fire, and tell ghost stories, and eat marshmallows, and poke the fire with little sharp sticks?” Pinkie came bouncing up in front of Eli as she was speaking, and his first instinct was to shove her away, so she could resume her top-spinning elsewhere, but figured even she needed to vent her excitement or frustration in her own way.

“We probably need to think about making camp soon. We've already walked all day with no real troubles.” Applejack adjusted her hat, and turned in the direction of the path ahead of them. “I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I take that as a good sign.”

~   ~   ~

For the next few hours, they covered as much ground as they could manage. The path had disappeared at one point, and they were forced to trail through the dense forest, going one clearing at a time, until they were back at what could pass for another pathway, though it was denser on both sides than the main path that lead them in.

Slowing his pace, Eli suggested that they find a place to rest for the night, since it wouldn't do them any good wandering around in the forest after dark.

Pinkie Pie on the other-hand continued to bound off into the forest, and Applejack called out for her to turn around that they were making camp.

Pinkie Pie seemed to be ignoring her, and frolicked on. Eli was half willing to let her go off and do her own thing, but rolled his eyes, as he caught Applejack's gaze.

“Maybe you should go stop her, before she hops off another cliff.”

"Confound that pony," said Applejack, snorting and going after her.

Getting down on one knee, Eli started pulling some things from his pack, as Rainbow Dash looked around for sticks and twigs to make a camp fire with. In the distance they heard Applejack yell at Pinkie Pie to come back that they were making camp.

"Okie dokie!" They heard from the woods, and then a high-pitched scream.

Instantly, Eli was upright on his feet, straining his ears to listen to the surrounding jungle forest, fully alert and in fight or flight mode.

Another scream wafted toward them.

Without a thought both Rainbow Dash and Eli were moving through the foliage and the trees in the direction of the scream. Eli could feel his feet pounding the ground under him, and could hear his breathing in his ears.

Up ahead he saw Applejack running, and he changed directions to intercept her. "Pinkie Pie's been nabbed!" she hollered towards him as Rainbow Dash soared past Eli, dodging the thick branches.

Eli was not liking this at all, as with each passing second the darkness in the forest was growing more and more intense, and his visibility was dropping to single digits. If this were a normal operation, he'd have night vision equipment, and state of the art tools at his disposal.

Just ahead of them, he could make out the subtle color of pink being bounded through the forest, and instantly heard another scream. Only one much closer.

Still at a dead run he saw Applejack literally get swept off her feet and dragged off to his right, in the complete opposite direction that Pinkie was being taken.

“Aw shit!” he yelled, waving his arms at Rainbow.

Rainbow Dash, hearing the scream from Applejack, slowed enough to see what was happening, and spotted Eli waiving his arms.

"Go get Pinkie!" He yelled, as he changed directions in full run to go after Applejack.

Rainbow didn't hesitate for a second; setting her ears back she charged forward, making sure not to lose sight of the pink haze through the thick brush.

Eli on the other hand was huffing as he ran; every muscle in his legs were aching, and still he was no closer to reaching Applejack. He knew that if he could only make up a little bit of ground, he would have her, but as it was the gap was ever-growing larger between them, as his opponent was more deft at negotiating the thick forest floor.

Giving one last gust of strength, Eli lurched forward as a loud cracking noise sounded near him in the darkness. Turning just in time, Eli saw a huge branch swing from his left and catch him across both ankles sending him sprawling forward, where he hit the soft soil of the forest floor on his face, and chest and rolled to his side.

Dazed and out of breath, and shaking off the face-planting, he leapt back to his feet in time to hear Applejack scream again, only further in the darkness, and too far for him to reach now.

“No!” he shouted, as he strained to listen.

Taking a quick couple of breaths, he bounded off again after the scream, and headed into a darkness of nothingness; as he ran he managed to hit everything in his path, both shrub and branch. His clothes were snagged, and torn, and every sharp object seemed to barb his flesh, but his relentlessness pushed him forward, as his soldier mode was activated at one hundred percent; nothing was stopping him from getting her back.

~   ~   ~

After ten or so minutes of being pulled by her ankles, Applejack came to rest in a small clearing near a cave. She looked around to find her attacker, but saw nothing in the pitch black darkness. She was trembling and frightened, but still managed to muster her courage.

"Whose out there?!" she yelled, as she tried to bite the ropes from her hooves. "Show yerself so I can whoop yer ass!"

Pausing from her biting, she realized that the ropes were awful thick on her hooves, and it would take too long to rat-bite them. She tried to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, but it was next to impossible. The night had hit Everfree Forest, and it was true to its legend as being darker than black.

Come on Applejack think, the said to herself, as she struggled more with the ropes. There was always a way out of every situation, and this was no different. If whatever it was had wanted to eat her, she would already be soup in some big bowl.

Jerking her head, Applejack was alerted by some rustling, as a hooded figure approached from within the cave, with a torch.

Applejack couldn't make out the figure, even with the torch-light. But it didn't stop her from from being pissed. “Why you two-sided sidewinder, when I get my hooves on you, I'm gonna put the hurt on you so hard, your ancestors will feel me!”

The hooded figure came to within a few feet of where Applejack was laying and tied, and stooped down. For just a second, Applejack's eyes widened, as she saw the face of the hooded figure, and she stammered her words. “Y . . . you!”

"This game I play, I most regret," the hooded pony said, "but not on ponies I will place my future's bet."