Book 1: Only the Beginning

Chapter 20:

Hoofe was healed, and taken care of. Everyone was sleeping, or trying to go to sleep. I was watching the forest for Fire and his group. As I sat by the entrance of the cave we were hiding in, I was dosing off. I was forcing myself to stay away, which seemed difficult for me. Everytime I closed my eyes, I would hear something move in the forest, or hear the wind blow through the trees. I would end up scaring myself awake from all the noises in the night, and that's how I seemed to have stayed awake.

Dawn finally came after a long night of no sleep, I dozed off, and didn't wake anyone up. I could finally fall asleep for a little while. After a few hours, which seemed like two minutes, Charm was waking me up. "Dash, it's almost noon." She said, "We need to get going."

With me being blinded by the sunlight, and just waking up, I stretched to get up. As I did so, I felt stiff, sore, and pain. I groaned in pain as I got to my feet, I stretched once more, and took a deep breath. "I'm up," I said tiredly, "Is everyone ready?"

"We're all good Dash," Hoofe said, with slight annoyance, "Are you feeling okay?"

I looked at her, and shook my head. "I'm fine, just need to wake up." I said, "How do you feel? You seem quite annoyed."

"I'm ok," She said, crossing her arms across her chest, "Just have a headache, and just feel funny. Other than that, I'm fine."

I nodded to what she said, and forced myself to form into my horse. "Well," I said looking back at them all, "Let's head out. This time I want everyone in signal file, just so everyone can stay closer I guess. Watch out for any sign of Fire, or any other members of his team."

I turn to walk out the cave, and I see Black Magic right in front of me. I jump in shock and fear, as he just sat there looking at me. "Good morning." He said, without acknowledging that I almost had a heart attack from him, "How is everyone this morning?"

As I was trying to breathe again, Charm came up and talked to the young cub. "Well we are doing alright, our young little friend." She said as she knelt down to his level of height, "How are you? Aren't you supposed to be with your mother?"

"I happy you guys are doing okay." Black Magic said, "I'm doing just fine myself. And yes, I should be with my mother, but I told her that I've been trying to hunt on my own so she doesn't expect nothing like this. I wanted to tell you though that when you guys got rid of the tracker in whoever it was, it made Fire very angry and Marshall is in pain now. I don't know why he's in pain, but he is in much pain."

"You don't know why he's in pain?" I asked, "You wouldn't be able to tell us anything about Marshall that we should know about?"

"Well," Black Magic said, in deep thought, "Me and my mother joined them recently, and so I don't know much about them."

I sighed in sadness for him to not know much. "But I do know that Fire is not the actual leader of the group." Black Magic said.

In confusion we look at Magic, and Muddy asked him, "What do you mean? They listen to his orders."

"They listen to what Marshall tells Fire to order them to do." Black Magic said, " I've heard Marshall yelling at Fire, like Marshall is in charge of things, and I don't hear Fire argue back much except for just a few things."

We listened to what Black Magic said, and as I thought about it, I said, "That's probably why Marshall seems to be more active than Fire. Fire seems restrained, and Marshall seems to want to do everything. It's a possibility that he is actually in charge, but covers himself with Fire as leader. Which means, whatever Marshall did to Scorpion, he did to Fire."

"Well," Charm said looking confused, and in thought, "How could we prove our thoughts? We could be wrong about the whole thing. I mean you overhearing Marshall yell at Fire could have been Marshall being his angry self. Which means Fire is still in charge."