“For the last time, Spike, the answer is no!” Twilight stomped her hoof on the ground. “I’m not about to let you walk into the most dangerous forest in all of Equestria!”
“Oh c’mon, Twilight,” Spike moaned. “This is the first time I’ve been anywhere outside of Canterlot and you’re not going to let me come with you?”
“Not if there’s a risk of you getting killed,” Twilight huffed.
“So it’s okay if you do something dangerous, but not me?”
Applejack moved between them, her expression growing more irate with each sentence they exchanged. “As much as I’d love to sit here ‘an listen to ya two argue, my sister is still missing.” She glared at Spike. “Quit yer whining.”
Twilight gave him a sympathetic look as he stormed off. She turned back to face Applejack, a sheepish smile on her face. “I… sorry about him, he’s still a baby dragon.”
Applejack shrugged, not looking back at Twilight as she trotted toward the Everfree. “It’s fine, but we’re wasting daylight just sittin’ out here, and I don’t have the patience for it neither.”
“Right.”
“Never took you as the assertive type, Applejack.” Rainbow Dash grinned. “I kinda like this side of you.”
“Rainbow Dash, please,” Rarity tittered. “This is not the time for joking around.”
“I mean, I wasn’t joking, but alright.”
Despite the stern expression on Applejack’s face, Twilight could faintly see the edges of her lips curl into a smile.
The light mood that the four of them had going into the forest had long been replaced by a sense of dread, hanging humid in the air, suffocating them. They were getting close now, Twilight could feel it.
“Everyone stop.” Twilight paused for a moment, the other three following suit. Applejack opened her mouth but promptly closed it again as she watched the unicorn stare up into the sky. “Do you see that? It’s smoke. We’re getting close to the crash site of the meteor.”
Rarity pursed her lips together. “Pardon me, darling, but what makes you think the three of them would even go out this far?”
Twilight sighed in exasperation. “Think about it for a minute, you said they were having a sleepover, right?”
Applejack nodded. “That’s what I told ya, yeah. I last saw ‘em at the treehouse that I helped my sis built.”
“And they’re a bunch of kids, right?”
“...Yeah?”
“Fillies are naturally curious, and stupid. It’s not a coincidence that this meteor lands close to Sweet Apple Acres and they just happen to go missing. They probably went off to go explore the crash late at night and got lost.”
Applejack didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t protest. Twilight took the silence as a sign to continue, briefly glancing behind them before marching forward. “The quicker we find these fillies, the better. I don’t want them tampering with any of my potential research material.”
“Are you serious?!” A blur of color shot past Twilight, her muzzle practically against Rainbow Dash’s face. “This is not a joke!”
Twilight rolled her eyes and moved past her. “Of course this isn’t a joke, I conduct my research very professionally, and I can’t have three helpless fillies messing it up.”
“They ain’t helpless, and they aren’t stupid neither.” Applejack glared at Twilight. “Just keep yer little comments to yourself and we’ll be out of your mane when we find ‘em, alright?”
“Fine by me,” Twilight said with a shrug. “I didn’t exactly come here to make friends.”
“Rainbow Dash!”
Twilight felt a gust of wind blow her mane into her face as Rainbow Dash zoomed through the air. There was a mixture of panic and excitement in the pegasus’s eyes.
“Scootaloo? Scootaloo, where are you!” Rainbow Dash called back—not checking to see if the others were behind her—and not stopping when they definitely weren’t.
“Dash, please, slow down!” Twilight’s efforts were in vain. Even if Rainbow Dash had heard her, she certainly wasn’t acting like it. Dash had gone too far too fast, and there was no keeping up with her at that point.
“Dash,” Twilight heaved, her voice barely audible, “I swear you’re going to get me killed.”
“Do try to go easy on yourself, darling, no pony can keep up with her,” Rarity chided. “Though I wish she would attempt to restrain herself at least a little.”
“Can’t be helped none,” Applejack said, adjusting her hat as she peered through the forest clearing. “Come on, I can tell we’re gettin’ close now.”
“I certainly hope so. The sooner I can get Sweetie Belle out of this dreadful forest, the sooner I can scrub myself free of this awful mud,” Rarity replied with a slight pout. “Where do you think she went off to, Twilight?”
“...Twilight?”
Their voices were nothing but white noise to Twilight’s ears. This was going well, far too well for her not to feel somewhat skeptical. Maybe she was just being cynical, but the little voice in the back of her head told her that something was very wrong.
“Let’s just keep moving forward.” Twilight didn’t know why she suddenly felt the need to whisper.
The soft hissing she intermittently heard did little to aid her morbid imagination either.
It was only another minute of brisk trotting before Twilight spotted the silhouette of a familiar pegasus. Rainbow Dash was pacing in front of what seemed to be an entrance to a cave. It made Twilight nervous, as up until now the pegasus had made a point of never letting her hooves touching the ground. For her to be anxious enough to be willingly grounded was… troublesome, to say the least.
“Took you long enough!” Dash barked, pointing a wing at the cave entrance. “They’re in there, I’m sure of it!”
Twilight raised a brow. “How can you be sure?”
Dash rolled her eyes. “Duh, I’ve already scanned this whole place and found no sign of them. They have to be in here!”
Twilight took the time to glance around the crater they stood in. Not a soul in sight, that was a definite. It was strange though, because even after reviewing all the available information she had regarding the Everfree Forest’s geography, never once had she recalled any caves existing in the forest. Was this the result of the crater?
“What stopped you from going inside?” Twilight asked.
Rainbow Dash looked at her as if she asked yet another stupid question. “Are you kidding me? It’s super dark in there! I didn’t think spelunking would be on my agenda today so I had to wait for you. You got a spell or something that can light up this cave?”
Twilight scoffed. “Of course I do. Here, let me lead the way.”
She barely hesitated as the entrance to the cave was illuminated by a bright purple light that emanated from the tip of her horn. Dash wasn’t wrong; where the light faded away only pitch black remained, as if the cave itself was feeding off any light inside.
“Watch your step,” Twilight said to no one in particular, “I didn’t plan on going into a cave today, so I don’t know what we might find down here.”
A dull blue light shined to the left of Twilight, revealing Rarity’s sheepish smile. “I may not be adept at magic, but I hope I can be of some assistance.”
Twilight’s pacing was slow at first, but after hearing nothing more than moisture dripping off of the large stalactites that littered the cavern’s ceiling, she sped up.
Clang!
Twilight drew her hoof back and peered down. She’d stepped on a large piece of sheet metal. Using her telekinesis to hold it upright, she could faintly make out a decal etched across it:
USCSS Nostromo 1809246-09
Twilight stared at it for a second, before sighing and turning back. “Do any of you know what this–”
Her sentence echoed throughout the cave. No one was behind her anymore.
“I-is anyone there?” She called out each of their names, but the only response she ever got was the sound of her own voice. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Twilight bit her lip, a pit of ice forming in the bottom of her stomach.
She walked along the closest wall to her, painfully aware of the fact that the cavern was becoming increasingly narrower as she continued walking. If she listened close enough, she could hear the hissing—
“Twilight!”
Twilight jerked her head toward the sound of the voice. “Rainbow Dash? Is that you? Where are you?”
“Farther down, just keep walking straight!”
“As if I even had a choice,” she mumbled. It didn’t take long for her to reach Rainbow Dash, but when she did, Twilight found that she no longer needed her light to guide her, for the cavern was already brightly lit by a green glow.
Eggs were littered across the cavern floor, hundreds of them. Twilight would have been repulsed if she wasn’t so thoroughly horrified.
Twilight halted in place, fighting the urge to gag as she held one hoof over her muzzle. “W-what are these things? Some kind of eggs?”
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “I have no idea, to be honest. I didn’t want to get close to them to find out.” She pointed ahead with one wing. “We should leave, this place is... scary. Come on, there’s an exit this way.”
“Scary? I never thought the Rainbow Dash could be scared, especially by some random dark cave,” Twilight huffed. “Let’s just go back the way we came, I know the way.”
“This way is quicker,” Dash urged, “I don’t want to sit down here any longer than I have to.”
Twilight shook her head incredulously. “Wait a minute, what about the others? What about the fillies? Just a moment ago you seemed so sure that they were down here, what changed?”
Dash chuckled. “We already found them, Twi. They were huddled together in some crevice, scared out of their minds. Just follow me and I’ll take you to them.”
Twilight felt compelled to move, but her hooves felt like they were stuck in place as if caught within a spider’s web. That little voice in the back of her head was there again, warning her. “...What’s her name?”
Dash blinked. Weren’t her eyes magenta?
“Whose name?”
“The name of that filly that matters to you so much, what’s her name?”
Dash scoffed. “What does that matter to you anyway? You’re not here for them, right? All you care about is your research.”
“Just answer the damn question,” Twilight growled, priming her horn with a vibrant purple hue. “What is your sister’s name?!”
…
…
“Looks like you caught me, Twilight Sparkle.”
Twilight screamed, letting loose a magical concussive blast, which flung the imposter against an adjacent cavern wall. She panted, making a one-eighty before galloping off in the opposite direction.
Behind her, she could hear the sound of fire erupting, she was then tackled and hoisted into the air, the flapping of wings filling her ears.
“Hang on Twilight!” A familiar voice shouted at her. Terrified magenta eyes stared down at Twilight as the real Rainbow Dash expertly weaved through the maze-like tunnels.
“S-slow down, Dash! You’re going to kill us!” Twilight yelled, narrowly avoiding being decapitated by a nearby stalagmite.
“If I fly any slower, that thing is going to kill us instead!”
They were out of the cave in seconds, stray branches occasionally cutting Twilight’s face as she was met with the full wrath of the Everfree’s flora while in the air. She didn’t realize how suffocating and oppressive it really was down there until she took her first breath outside the cavern.
Rainbow Dash never stopped once. Never looking behind her to see if she was being chased, or even if Rarity or Applejack were nearby, only staring straight ahead until they were out of the Celestia-forsaken forest.
Eventually, Twilight tumbled to the ground as her vision blurred, a wave of nausea passing over her.
...
Twilight stood up slowly, nearly puking as she regained her vision. “D-Dash, what just happened?”
She glanced across the field where Dash was, in her hooves she cradled a sobbing pegasus filly, rocking back and forth while gently stroking her mane. Rainbow Dash said nothing for a while, just sitting there and holding the filly close to her chest. Finally, she stared up at Twilight with a haunting thousand-yard stare, murmuring only a single sentence.
“I wasn’t fast enough, Twilight.”