Chapter 8: The Tree
It was a grey day in Cloudsdale. How was that possible? Through the cool, dense haze, a lone pegasus crept through empty streets, delicate swirls of mist stirring at his hooves with each step.
When he'd woken up that morning, he'd assumed it was still nighttime. By all appearances, the city looked to be asleep—but that seemed unlikely given the slender, shimmering rays of sunlight that slipped past the dense haze as unassuming envoys of the sun.
No one had been home that morning, though that was hardly unusual. He squinted at the rows of tall, opaque windows that lined the faces of houses half-submerged in cloud, but there didn't seem to be anyone home. He thought he detected movement from time to time, but each time he would turn to see an anomaly in the mist dispersing—a particularly familiar or particularly alien shape spreading sadly into sameness with a silent nevermind.
He called out into the ominous silence and immediately regretted it, as one does. He experienced a creeping superstition which equimorphosed the silence, filling it with a cruel amusement at his obvious fear.
Or was it a superstition? A dark, solid shape lurked in the corner of his eye, disappearing whenever he turned his head towards it. Something echoed through the mist: a single hoof-step.
He stopped, staring straight ahead. He had no idea which direction the sound had come from. Instead of surprise, he felt a strange calm. This was no stranger lurking in the shadows, watching and judging him from the mind of an other. It was as though whoever was watching him had been doing so all his life, shuffling unobtrusively through his dreams, and looking over his shoulder at the world as he perceived it, as though it were a particularly interesting jigsaw puzzle.
He the pony's name, but he knew now that there was no need to call out—there was nothing to say. A black alicorn didn't so much enter his field of view as shift into focus, resolving from a vague blur as ubiquitous as afterimages into a clear, solid shape.
The alicorn came to a stop in front of him. "It's time for you to wake up, Thunder Dasher." The voice was unusually even and articulate, but it didn't sound like the voice of an immortal.
"You're him." This was one of those moments in which understanding a thing is as natural as breathing, but describing it is impossible.
"I'm exactly what you expected. I'm here to tell you everything you were ready to hear me say. In fact, you can say it."
Thunder Dasher's thoughts rushed backwards in time, trying to pinpoint what exactly he was meant to discuss. The loneliness of his childhood stung him—not painfully, but as a playful nip meant to remind. "All the other ponies take the world for granted." He had to stop and take in the words after he'd spoken them, wondering whether they were true or not.
"They're like animals," agreed the alicorn. "They don't know what's going to happen to them. Every night, they fall asleep smiling and dream lies. Then, one day, they don't wake up."
Thunder Dasher shivered. "I envy them. I don't dream at all."
"Reality isn't something to dream about."
The sunlight seemed to burn through the curtains of mist around him with the same affect as his thoughts, which swirled and resolved from permutating, doubtful vagaries into a clear, directed stream. "I hate to imagine anyone else outliving me. It's not fair."
"Life bears all the marks of a cruel joke told by a spiteful god. Think about it: a plant cannot think. Animals can, but they don't know that they can think. Ponies are among the few animals that not only know they can think, but know that they will stop thinking—and yet, most of the time, they don't think about it."
"You're describing a hierarchy."
"You and I are the unluckiest of all. We're at the top."
His heart beat faster, and a sudden sense of purpose coursed through him. "I understand now. The reason I've always felt different from other ponies is because their minds don't let them make that full connection."
"Accurately imagining their own nonexistence is just barely out of their grasp. There's one last step missing; they're one little click away from understanding a kind of horror they haven't invented words for. We lack the filter that every other living thing has."
A chill ran through the pegasus, dancing and skittering across his nerves with the impassive alacrity of a hundred spiders. "I have a choice to make, don't I?"
The alicorn tilted his head up. "You or them."
Thunder Dasher shook his head, and kept shaking it longer than one does for the sake of communication. "I was wrong. That's not a choice at all."
"I felt the same way once I understood."
He felt the clouds beneath him taking a shaky breath, expanding upward. The mist seemed to be rising quickly as well, rushing past his face in a confusing, exhilarating assault on his sense of direction. He stumbled backwards, trying to blink the problem away and making it worse. As placeless light flooded his eyes, he heard his old friend telling him two things. The first was his real name, which he'd already guessed by this point but which still evoked deeply confused feelings. The second was one of those goodbyes between friends, the kind that doesn't need the word goodbye:
"Try not to hate yourself."
…
The air in the cave grew colder as the ponies descended a long set of stairs. Even though her horn shone brightly, Twilight found the silence just as oppressive as complete darkness. She spent several wistful seconds thinking of birdsong before she remembered that she could talk.
"Try to stay spread out. We'll all need room to move if another dust golem shows up."
"I'm not worried about those things," said Rainbow Dash, suddenly striding past Twilight. "Did you see how that one split clean in half? It was a pushover. It was only scary when we all thought it was some kind of dead pony."
"Does anyone else feel that?" asked Fluttershy. Twilight tensed, suspecting her friends were about to become incapacitated by another invisible force. Instead, she felt a cool breeze wafting from further down the tunnel.
"A way out," announced Twilight. Spurred by the promise of some unknown prize, she sped up, stretching her magic as far around the next bend as it would reach. Soon she was surrounded by the crowded echoes of galloping, which left her head spinning as she emerged into a spacious, roughly dome-shaped vault with a thin ray of what appeared to be sunlight shining through a gap in its apex, illuminating flecks of dust spiraling downwards towards…
"A tree?" Pinkie Pie glanced around at the others. "That's not what we're looking for, is it?"
The tree's roots wandered above and below uneven layers of dust, giving the distinct impression of an animal that had tried and failed to bury itself. The leaves, however, looked dense and robust, almost glistening under the little light that struck them.
More than anything else, the tree looked like a trap. Applejack began to approach it indirectly, circling clockwise around the edge of the cavern. She glanced back at Twilight. "See if yer magic can find any traps. If they're anywhere, they're bound to be here."
Twilight nodded. She'd already been probing the room with magic, but only reflexively. She now gave the task her full attention, searching for anything out of place. She started by feeling out the tree. Nothing on its roots, she thought. Nor were there any spells on the surface of its bark. Holding her breath, she let her magic wander gradually up the trunk, towards the branches…
She drew back as a familiar hiss issued from the wall to her left. She turned to see Applejack jump away from a pony-sized, pony-shaped cascade of dust falling to the ground, clumsily shaking itself off, and turning towards its prey.
Applejack braced herself, standing with her side to the golem. As it lumbered closer, crouching like an overgrown, hulking cat, she turned her back towards it and bucked just in time to catch it mid-pounce, knocking it back with a satisfying crack.
"Ha!" said Applejack. "Ain't this cave got anythin' better to throw at us than dusty ol' golems, full o'"—
She stopped short as a deep rumbling sound filled the air. She walked backwards towards her friends, her eyes darting around at the walls. They huddled uncertainly for a moment before Rainbow Dash leapt away, whipped around towards them and shouted "Get away from the walls!"
Twilight's eyes widened as she realized what was happening. The rumbling reached a deafening pitch as everypony scrambled outwards, just in time to avoid the first golem bursting out from where they'd just been standing, swinging its head carelessly about as it stumbled towards them. On the opposite wall, two more emerged. Their shoulders clashed, each stubbornly shoving past the other in pursuit of six of the seven living things in the room.
One by one, golems continued to emerge from all sides. Fluttershy yelped and jumped into the air, where her frantic wings carried her into the tree's sturdy arms. As she wrapped her trembling hooves around a branch and stared down, Twilight followed her gaze to see a dull-grey-colored hoof reaching up from the ground, either searching for leverage or making a beckoning gesture. (Twilight forced herself to assume the former.)
A second hoof soon joined the first, and then both forehooves planted themselves on the ground, pushing up a head whose empty sockets and gnashing maw cascaded tiny landslides of dust. As the golem climbed out of the ground, others followed suit, falling into the ranks of the horde still approaching from the walls.
As the automatons closed in, Rainbow Dash delivered a preemptive kick to closest one, separating the upper half of its skull from the body. It stumbled momentarily before dissolving into dust, but two more of its ilk clambered over its remains.
Twilight lowered her head, braced her hooves, and began firing bolts of magic from her horn, each creating a backlash that throbbed through her body in time with her pulse. Fifteen heartbeats later, their lines drew too close for comfort, so she started taking a step backwards between each shot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a golem leap towards Rarity, only to find himself gored upon her horn. The sound of scattering dust and violent coughing followed, but was immediately drowned out by the creaks and hisses that crawled through Twilight's ears, scuttling around the rhythmic throbbing like hyenas nipping at an elephant.
The ponies soon found themselves in the center of the vault, with their backs to the tree. "There's too many of them," squealed Fluttershy from its branches. "We have to get out!"
Twilight struggled to find room for thoughts amidst her overloaded senses. Teleporting the six of them out would require a clearer idea of their destination than she had—being encased in rock would hardly be better than being torn apart by golems. She could teleport them into the tree, but she doubted its branches could hold all of them for long.
As she struggled to thin their ranks and to think of another option, her magic sense was tickled by something she hadn't noticed before: a presence inside the tree, shivering and shuffling almost as though it were conscious…
She stopped shooting and gasped. "A spellcaster!" Pinkie Pie turned to look at her with wide eyes that silently begged to know whether she'd get to live or not. "The tree!" Twilight shouted. She couldn't hear herself, but she prayed they could hear her. "Someone's inside the tree!"
She whipped around, her horn brimming with as much unicorn fire as she could muster. Fluttershy flew into the air, while the other four backed as far away from the tree as they dared, just in time for her to send a scorching blast through its trunk. A barrage of branches, large splinters, and smoking embers landed on a row of golems opposite Twilight. As the smoke cleared, she squinted through it and learned the identity of her spellcaster.
"The wing!" shouted Rainbow Dash. Realizing her magic was exhausted, Twilight lunged towards the large black wing, which was still reeling from the attack, and sunk her teeth deep into its base, which extended down into the stump of the tree. Her eyes widened and she gagged as the unmistakable taste of blood slithered into her mouth, but she dug her teeth deeper, jerking her head from side to side as her heartbeat grew louder and faster.
Though she was dangerously light-headed, she persevered, bracing her hoofs and putting her every muscle into the effort. The thumping was joined by a distant screaming, as if the wing's owner were miles away. She felt her eyes rolling up into her head. The scream grew steadily louder until it became the only thing she could hear, the only sensation left in a brain that was on the verge of abandoning her...
Snap. For a brief moment, she was aware of nothing but some vaguely sideways motion as the wing's resistance vanished. Then there was a dull, distant smack as the ground slammed into the side of her head from out of nowhere. She briefly wondered why nothing hurt before she realized she couldn't feel anything to begin with.
She tried to roll over to see if the golems were still approaching, but all she could see were swaying, colorful blurs that were probably either her friends or a flock of tropical birds. She sent signals to her ears telling them to move, but got neither sensation nor sound as a response. She took a shaky breath and managed words Get the wing. Hoping that her friends had heard her and could handle the situation from there, she permitted herself to pass out.
…
Consciousness returned to her sometime later, clambering sluggishly and grudgingly into her skull. Most of her body still refused to move, so she compensated by blinking furiously. She suspected was the only way she'd be able to stay awake.
As she experimentally moved her jaw, she was alarmed by the strong taste of blood. She spat a gob onto herself and moved her tongue around, searching for a spot where she'd bitten it. She stopped as her eyes came into focus on a red, raw and glistening stump at the end of something lying on the ground several feet away. Squinting at, she ascertained two things: what had happened to the wing, and how the blood in her mouth had gotten there.
"Twilight!"
She managed to turn her head slightly to see Applejack rushing towards her. "It was alive," croaked Twilight. Applejack raised an eyebrow, so Twilight tried to think of a better description. When none occurred to her, she resumed blinking furiously.
As her other friends arrived at her side, Twilight was hit by a shuddering, burning sensation all over her body. As she groaned and contorted, she recognized it as the same pain she'd missed earlier.
"Hold still," urged Fluttershy gingerly. "You have a very nasty bruise on the side of your head."
The moment she'd finished hearing the words bruise and head, the pain in Twilight's left temple doubled. "Where are we?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"Fluttershy and I pulled everyone out through that hole in the ceiling," said Rainbow Dash. "We had plenty of time once all the golems turned back into dust."
"So it worked," said Twilight, nodding in her mind since she didn't want to move her head.
"About that," said Pinkie Pie slowly, circling Twilight's supine form. "How did you know ripping out the wing would kill all the zombies?"
"It was casting spells." She let out a hacking cough and discovered she'd swallowed some of the wing's blood while she'd been unconscious. "I didn't realize it before, because it could cast them from so far away and its magic wasn't like a pony's… but once I was right next to the tree, I could feel it in there. It was alive."
Applejack glanced suspiciously at the wing. "Still might be. That wing was hidin' in that tree for Celestia knows how long, and it still bleeds red. It plainly ain't anythin' natural, but that don't tell us what it is."
For the first time, Twilight examined her surroundings. They were in a wide, mossy ravine that sloped gently up towards what looked to be a path up the mountainside, and sloped down to a familiar hole in the ground. She was close enough to see snapped branches lying on the cave floor below, gazing up at her as if to accuse.
Meanwhile, the wing's feathers rustled softly in the wind, dust trickling out of them and back onto the mountain. "This wing belonged to Thunder Dasher, the pony we're trying to stop," said Twilight.
Rarity grimaced. "It's no wonder it was so well-protected. We've taken something far more personal than any magical artifact."
