Twilight woke up to somepony moving her blanket away from her shivering form. She tried to grab it back, but her limbs wouldn’t respond.
“How ya feelin’, Miss?” asked a light and airy voice that she didn’t recognize.
“Blanket… please,” was the best she could reply.
There was a shuffling sound, and she was tucked into another warm cover. Twilight snuggled her head into it the best she could and sighed.
“Is that better?” the voice asked.
She nodded her head slightly.
“That’s good,” said the voice with an audible smile. “Uh… that’s right! I haven’t told ya my name yet, have I?”
There was a brief pause, as if the pony was expecting her to respond. Twilight remained still and silent.
“Well, my name’s Lady. Granny Applejack told me aboutcha, but she didn’t mention yer name…”
“Twilight… Sparkle…”
There was another pause, this time followed by a nervous giggling.
“Granny told me that about you. I just didn’t think you’d, ya know, stick to that story once ya really came to.”
Twilight would have rolled her eyes if she had the energy to do so. What was it about her name that was so strange? A compelling question, surely, but one that would have to wait until she was out of death’s grip.
She was able to open her eyes a little more than the last time she tried, and Twilight could see the blurry shape of a hulking pony sitting beside her. She felt like she should’ve recoiled in shock but found that she had neither the energy nor the will to do so.
“Sleep… I want… sleep…”
“I’ve gotta make sure ya eat something first,” said Lady. “Granny Applejack was very… um… insistent about that.”
Twilight groaned. Her stomach was still full of sea water and it sloshed around painfully. She wasn’t sure if she could eat, much less want to.
Something hard tried to shove its way through her lips, and it took Twilight longer than she would like to admit to realize that it was Lady doing it. She opened her mouth to moan in protest, but that just made the other pony’s job easier.
“It’s just a cracker,” said Lady. “It’s the only thing that we think ya can keep down right now. Just chew and swallow.”
The cracker tasted like sawdust and as it mixed in with the still lingering salt in her mouth, Twilight wanted to gag. She passed it over from her tongue to her teeth, crunching down on it and feeling it being pulverized into a stomach-churning paste. She swallowed the nasty mixture of cracker, salvia, salt, and bile and hoped she wouldn’t have to feel it come back up.
“Good job, Miss.”
Twilight half expected a doggy treat or a pat on the head. Instead of voicing this particular piece of snarkiness, she gave the blurred mass of a pony a twitch of her lips.
“That’s right,” said Lady. “Ya gotta keep yer spirits up! We’ll be in Port Jonagold soon, just you see. I’m sure you’ll be feeling better by then!”
She’s certainly one for optimism, isn’t she?
There was an uncomfortable silence between them for a moment or two before Twilight felt the air shift and a gentle hoof move under her head. She groaned as her neck protested. It wasn’t until she felt liquid against her lips that she understood. Truth be told, Twilight was thirsty.
Something to do with all that seawater, she thought. All that salt can’t be good for me.
She opened her mouth and let it flow across her tongue, but the taste of it made her spit it right back out. Twilight desperately wanted to retch again but stopped just short of doing so, coughing and sputtering instead.
“Yeah, Granny’s apple cider takes a little while to get used to,” said Lady, “but it’s the only drink that’ll stay fresh on the ship so…”
Twilight just nodded and coughed violently, still trying to get the rest of the apple cider out of her throat. Her entire body was shaking and shivering and twitching under the blanket. A disturbingly clear thought parted the fog that had settled on her mind.
I’m going to die, aren’t I?
“Whaddaya mean Twilight’s missing?!” shouted Rainbow Dash at the top of her lungs.
The rest of the ponies assembled winced.
“Like I was saying,” said Spike, taking his claws out of his ears, “Nopony’s seen Twilight since last night, and that includes me.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s missing,” said Rarity. “She could’ve been called to Canterlot or gone for a walk in the Everfree to see Zecora or—”
“Wouldn't she have left a note for Spike though, Rarity?” interrupted Applejack, pointing her hoof towards the baby dragon. “Twilight’s a real responsible pony.”
“Yeah!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie, bouncing a little. “I mean, remember when she went out to lunch last week and sent us all notes telling us the address and which table she was sitting at in case we needed her?”
“Uh-huh,” said Fluttershy. “She certainly wouldn’t just leave any of us without an explanation.”
“That’s what’s really weird about this whole thing,” said Spike, nodding. “This morning, there was this really powerful teleportation spell and—”
“Did Twilight cast it?” asked Rainbow Dash, waving a hoof.
Spike drew his claws over his face in exasperation.
“Like I was saying, I checked its magical signature using one of the doodads from Twilight’s study, and it matched up exactly with hers—except a lot stronger.”
“So what does that mean?” asked Rarity. “Did Twilight hook herself up to one of those dreadful magical enhancers?”
Spike shook his head.
“Nope,” he said. “That would leave behind some kind of extra magical residue that you could see. Like slime or a shimmer in the air or something. I remember Twilight talking about it.”
“We gotta send a message to the Princesses,” said Applejack. “They’re the most powerful magic users in all of Equestria, so they must have the answer!”
“You’re right, Applejack,” Fluttershy said. “The Princesses will know what to do.”
The mares all nodded. Spike grabbed the quill that he always kept behind his ear for emergency friendship reports and rummaged through the librarian desk until he found a scroll.
“Dear Princesses Celestia and Luna…”
The rocking of the ship and her weak legs made it difficult for Twilight to stand up properly, but she managed after a few false starts. Wrapping and tying the blanket firmly around herself with her teeth, she took a few wobbling steps forward and opened her eyes fully.
There was a lot more light than she expected to be in the hold of a ship, but other than that, it was pretty much as she expected—dank and made of wood. It was wide and low, with lots of crates and boxes.
Is this a shipping barge?
She stopped to examine one of the lights, attached to the ship by crudely-wrought iron, and noticed that it was actually a enchantment instead of an actual flame.
Pretty fancy for a ship like this.
She stepped a little closer to the wall to balance herself against it and groaned. The pain in her side had flared up again. Twilight simply gritted her teeth and continued to walk slowly, each movement of her legs adding a little more pressure to the area.
Somepony was shouting above decks, but she paid them no mind.
Just so long as they don’t shout “Giant squid ahead!”, I think I’ll be fine, she thought, smiling a little at her own joke.
After what seemed like ages of stumbling around, Twilight finally saw natural light spilling in from a square hole cut into the ceiling. Attached to it was a ladder made of rope and planks. She doubted that she could climb it in her current state without a lot of help.
“Hello?” she shouted, finding her voice for the first time since the raft. “Is anypony up there?”
The shouting above her stopped, and she heard hooves shuffling across the deck.
“Hello?” shouted Twilight again.
“Yeah, yeah. I heard ya. Don’t get yer tail in a twist.”
Twilight recognized the voice as the stallion Granny Applejack had been arguing with.
She waited a moment, and the stallion’s foreleg popped through the hole.
“C’mon now,” said the stallion. “Don’t be shy. I won’t bite ya unless yer into that kind of thing.”
Twilight, despite herself, blushed when the pony above her started to laugh. She climbed the first rung of the ladder, just enough so she could grab the stallion’s hoof. He grunted and then began to pull her up.
“A heavy one, ain’tcha?” he muttered.
For her part, Twilight simply remained silent and let herself be pulled through the hole. The bright light of the sun stung at her eyes, and she was forced to close them. Once she felt the stallion stop his pulling on her foreleg, she opened them again.
For a second or two, she was completely blinded by the light reflecting off the ocean, but her eyes quickly adjusted.
All around her was water with no land in sight.
Twilight’s eyes grew wide, and she choked back a scream.
“Ya alright?”
She didn’t look to him. Instead, Twilight looked to the only constant she had—the sun.
“Celestia,” she muttered. “Celestia!”
Twilight turned and faced the stallion, a frown on her face.
“Celestia!” she shouted. “Take me to Princess Celestia!”
“Who?”
The gravity of that simple question weighed down on her, and there was a silence between the two ponies.
“Ya alright?” asked the stallion again, reaching out to her with a hoof.
Twilight flinched away from his touch but remained silent.
No Princess…
No Ponyville…
“Look, ya must be pretty tired. Get some rest down in the hold, and we’ll get ya to Port Jonagold safe and sound.”
Twilight exploded.
“I don’t want to go to Port Jonagold! I don’t want to go get some rest! I want to go home! I want to go to Ponyville! I’m Twilight Sparkle, and I demand that you get me to Princess Celestia!”
The stallion was quiet for a second. Then, he began to laugh.
“You really believe that you’re Twilight Sparkle, huh? Well, I hate to tell you this but Twilight Sparkle has been dead for over a thousand years.”