//------------------------------// // Part IV - Chapter 6: Caverns of Chance // Story: Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky // by PortalJumper //------------------------------// Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky Part IV - Chapter 6: Caverns of Chance * * * Starlit coughed out all the air in her lungs when her back slammed against a solid slope of ice, and even as she gasped and spluttered to try and regain it she was busy scrambling to try and find purchase on any surface as she slid further and further into the icy abyss below. She could see Rainbow Dash above her, trying and failing to gain some air with her wings even though it was patently obvious that she was far too tired to do so. Finally the pegasus's strength completely failed and she flopped onto another slope of clear blue ice and began the perilous slide downward, only a few yards away from Starlit. The only pony Starlit couldn't see as she toppled and spun was Sun. She could hear his voice echoing off of the ice pillars, screams and cries of pain and panic, but everywhere she looked she couldn't see a trace of him. Starlit finally looked downward as she tried to get a grasp on where exactly this slope was taking her, but only saw more and more clear blue ice below. It spiraled and twisted in smooth curves and sharp spikes with seemingly no end, and Starlit could tell that she was picking up speed towards whatever lay at the bottom. A cry of anguish from Rainbow Dash cut through the air just as Starlit got her breath back, and she twisted her head around to see what could possibly be making the situation worse. Rainbow was splayed out on her back, still sliding down the slope and now with a large spike of ice embedded into her right flank. Blood streaked behind her, a grim crimson gash against the calming blue of the ice. So focused was Starlit on her wounded companion that she didn't see the slope finally come to a dead stop, and she had no time to react as she went into a complete free fall for a few seconds. The landing against the solid sheet of ice was only somewhat cushioned by her heavy cloak, but another scream of pain from Rainbow Dash drew her focus away from the burning in her lungs and the almost certainly broken ribs she had incurred. Dragging herself to her hooves, bolts of pain streaking across her chest as she did, she saw where Rainbow had landed. Rainbow Dash lay in a crumpled heap, wings splayed out behind her, and a puddle of blood forming underneath her haunches where she had landed directly on the ice spike. She shuddered and shook with sheer pain, sobs wracking her chest as Starlit ran over and flipped her onto her other side. "Aah! Careful!" Rainbow admonished. "For shit's sake, this hurts!" Starlit looked at the wound, and it wasn't good; the spike had pierced through all of the muscle tissue in her flank, and landing on it had shattered the base and pushed the main spike so deep in that it was scraping against her hip bones. There was still a small bit of the base that Starlit could grab with her magic, but the process of getting it out would be excruciating. "Rainbow, I need you to bite down on something, I have to get this out of you," Starlit said as she illuminated her horn. "What?! No, no no no! Just wait for it to melt!" Rainbow retorted, crawling away slowly with her forelegs. "Do you want to get frostbite while you wait, or let this gaping wound get infected?!" Starlit shot back. She was busy pulling out the medical supplies that she'd been given, as well as one of the few pieces of kindling that had been left in her pack. She jammed the stick into Rainbow's mouth, which the pegasus then spat out. "Please, don't take it out! I'll be fine, jus—" Starlit wasn't having it; she jammed the stick back into Rainbow's maw and put her hoof onto her muzzle to keep her from spitting it back out again. Starlit could feel Rainbow squirming and thrashing underneath the weight of her hoof until Starlit finally found purchase on the shard with her magic and began to pull. Rainbow's screams through the stick echoed long and loud off of the ice cavern walls, and a few spurts of hot blood came out with each agonizing inch that Starlit yanked the spike out. Finally the shock proved to be too much, and Rainbow passed out, the stick lolling out of her muzzle as Starlit got the last of the ice shard out of her flank. "Thank goodness, that's going to make this next part easier," Starlit said as she drew her small sword from its scabbard and pulled the stick away from Rainbow's mouth. She quickly used the sword to cut away the parts of her winter clothes at that were sticking to the wound, and rinsed it out with a small splash of water. Her cutie mark on that side was completely gone save for a small section of the lightning bolt near the bottom, but with the clothes and excess blood out of the way Starlit could get a better picture of what she needed to do. It took a few strikes with her flint and steel to light the frayed end of the twig, but it eventually caught and Starlit held the tip of her sword over the flame with her teeth as she cradled the twig in her front legs. A few moments passed, Starlit's gaze flitting between Rainbow's rapidly bleeding leg wound and her sword, until the tip of the blade finally turned red hot. Holding the sword in her teeth as steadily as her shivering jaw would let her, Starlit carefully poked the glowing tip into every bleeding spot in Rainbow's thigh that she could find. The acrid smell of burning hair mixed with the sickly sweet smell of cooking flesh and blood, and after a half-dozen prods with the sword the bleeding finally abated. Breathing heavily and working quickly with what little magical energy that she had left, Starlit let the sword fall with a clatter and hiss to the icy floor and pulled out the suturing needle and her thread. If she could stitch together skin, hopefully she could stitch together muscle too. Pouring some high-proof alcohol that Spitfire had given them onto the wound, Starlit got to work. It took Starlit what felt like two hours of careful, agonizing magic work, and by the time she actually closed up the wound her horn completely died out and the suture fell out of her grip. She let out a huge gasp of air, her breath coming in pants that sent fresh waves of pain through her broken ribs, but at the least she had stopped the bleeding and done what she could for the muscles. Hopefully Rainbow would be able to keep the leg, but at this point the worst of the danger was over, as far as Starlit could tell. With a last ragged gasp as she shoved Rainbow out of the pool of her own blood, Starlit collapsed into a deep, dreamless sleep. * * * Sun came back to consciousness with a throbbing headache and swimming vision. His legs felt like mush, and there was a sharp, pulsing pain on the side of his face not unlike the time when he'd been blown up and artfully pieced back together. "Silence, you there?" Sun asked futilely. All he could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat. Shakily, Sun pulled himself up to his hooves, and when he finally could see straight he was reminded of what had happened in the preceding ten minutes. He was in some small cavernous space, with the ceiling easily over three hundred feet above him. Despite being completely enclosed the walls all suffused a deep blue light from within, allowing him to see that he was inside an ice cavern. Quickly he turned around, looking for Starlit or Rainbow Dash, and found neither of them. They must've been separated in the fall, no doubt because Sun had been lagging behind when the fissure opened up. The only notable feature he could see was a small tunnel formed out of the ice that led deeper into the cavern. A rising feeling of dread welled up in Sun's chest as he, yet again, found himself alone due to unforeseen circumstances. He was alone, freezing, and grappling with the mounting fear that he would die down in these caverns with no way out. "Okay Sun, just breathe," he muttered under his breath. "You've been through worse than this. Just use the compass, that should give you a good enough heading." With a small spurt of magic Sun drew the compass stone out from his cloak, it mercifully still hanging there despite the fall. The small point of light hovered to his left, pointing back at the only exit to his particular cavern. "See, this'll be fine," Sun muttered again. "Just follow the little lig—" "Hello?" a diminutive voice asked, echoing around the cavern and causing Sun's heart to skip a beat. Quickly Sun made an about face and used his magic, grey though it was, to draw his dagger. Standing behind him, where previously there had been only an ice wall, was a pony that was only about two-thirds of his size. The pony, a stallion by the look of it, had skin and hair that were textured like dull gemstones, and his pupils and irises weren't round but oddly geometrical. He looked concerned, but not necessarily afraid of Sun. The two stared each other down for a long moment, neither daring to move lest the other made a hostile action in return. Finally it was the odd gem-pony that broke the metaphorical ice. "I, uh, saw you fall down here," the pony said, it's voice high and tinny, like his voice hadn't quite broken yet. "Are you okay?" "That depends," Sun replied, keeping his knife up. "Are you friend or foe?" "That depends on whether or not you're going to put that knife away," the pony replied back. Cautiously, not taking his eyes off of the creature, Sun sheathed his knife and took a step back. He may not have the most martial prowess, but he wasn't about to get jumped. "So, are you friend or foe?" Sun asked again. "I guess a friend, although if I'm going to be honest we haven't seen one of your kind down here in a long time. Not since the Freeze, at the least." "Then what say we get introductions out of the way, and see if we can't help each other," Sun said, holding out a hoof nervously. "I'm Setting Sun." The bug-pony took the hoof, and as it did Sun noticed that the creature's hooves were riddled with holes. They didn't look like wounds, but like the odd gem-like substance that this pony seemed to be made of had broken and shattered through repeated stress. "I'm Agateous," the gem-pony replied, shaking the hoof weakly. "You probably want to get somewhere warm, don't you?" "More than words could possibly describe." Sun answered with barely restrained glee, "but I have a pair of friends that are stuck down here with me that I have to find too." "Well, I know all of these tunnels like the back of my hoof, so I could help you out with that," Agateous answered. "Do you know where they landed?" "If I knew that I wouldn't need help finding them," Sun answered and he made his way towards the tunnel leading out. "Fair enough, but you don't want to go that way," Agateous replied. Before Sun could protest Agateous walked to the sheer wall that he had seemingly materialized from and ran a hoof along it. As quiet as a whisper the ice simply vanished into a thin haze, revealing a perfectly carved semi-circular tunnel behind it. "This way," Agateous offered, gesturing to the tunnel and making their way inside. Sun quickly followed suit, marveling at the tunnel and the entrance even as it rematerialized behind him. * * * A dull, throbbing pain roused Rainbow Dash to consciousness. She couldn't remember where she was, but her whole right leg felt numb and she could feel a welt building up on the right side of her muzzle. As she came to and her vision focused she saw Starlit, lain across a solid patch of ice and sleeping like the dead. A medical pack from back at the Outpost was still open next to her, and a large puddle of blood had frozen and congealed against the ground. The sight of the blood brought everything rushing back, and as she remembered a burning, lightning quick jolt of pain wound up through her right flank. "Ah!" Rainbow exhaled. "Ah, that hurts. By the Princess, what did she do to me?" Adjusting herself with her forelegs, sending fresh waves of pain through her haunch with each subtle motion, she turned her head to look at her wound. The stitching was crudely done, but there wasn't any fresh blood and it looked like it had been cleaned. Rainbow couldn't move the muscles in her hip at all, but she found that she could flex and move everything from her mid-leg down. "Could've at least bandaged it over too," Rainbow groused. Carefully she dragged herself over to the medical supplies and pulled out some rough cloth and carefully wound it around her flank and hip. It hurt with every successive wrap, but it would help keep the wound closed and protected. Starlit began to rouse as Rainbow Dash put the finishing touches on her bandage, and Rainbow pointedly averted her gaze as Starlit came around. "I told you not to pull out that icicle," Rainbow said, drawing Starlit's attention. "What?" Starlit answered blearily. "I have absolutely no feeling in my right leg, and I can't flex my hip on that side either," Rainbow continued, looking to Starlit. "Oh, for the love of… are you completely incapable of being gracious about anyt—" Starlit began, before Rainbow Dash cut her off. "But you were right to get it out of me. I was freaking out and in a lot of pain, I wasn't thinking straight, and you made a tough call. Thanks to you I'm probably going to be able to hang on to this leg, provided we get this done with before gangrene or frostbite set in." Starlit looked bewildered, and for the first time since they'd met Rainbow found her reluctant charge at a loss for words. She would be lying to herself if she didn't find something satisfying about that. "I'm being nice, I think the appropriate response is 'Thank you, Rainbow Dash.'" "Thanks nothing," Starlit retorted, "I had to spend two hours and all of my magic trying to knit your muscles back together with a fish bone suture and worse thread than I used for my daughter's baby clothes, not to mention ruining the tip of my sword on cauterizing all of your torn blood vessels." "And I had to bandage it up after losing probably a pint of blood and having a shard of ice tear through my leg, then having a crazy unicorn do impromptu surgery on me in an ice cavern without even a snowball to dull the pain. I think we're even, ma'am." The pair stared at each other for a moment as they lay a yard apart, until the tension was finally cut by both of them letting out a few snorts of laughter followed with hisses of pain from their respective injuries. "Ah, don't make me laugh, I think I broke a few ribs in the fall," Starlit said, holding her side gingerly. "I've never broken a bone, if you can believe it," Rainbow replied. "With as combative as you are, I honestly can't believe it." "I have a pretty dense bone structure for a pegasus, at least according to our town doctor," Rainbow replied. "She thinks that that's why I'm such a strong flyer; I've been working against my own weight for my whole life, which made all those muscles stronger to compensate." "How could she possibly know that?" Starlit asked incredulously. "She has a spell for it, I think. Unicorns are crazy, what with the magic and their wild assumptions and all." Starlit chuckled again, followed by another hiss of pain. "Don't push your luck," Starlit admonished, "I think I might just be starting to like you, since you sort of helped save our lives." Rainbow Dash let her gaze slide upward, towards the now enclosed roof of the ice cavern above them. A bit of sunlight dappled through, but most of the lighting they were seeing by was being provided by the ice around them which glowed a strange, luminescent blue. "I wouldn't thank me for that just yet, we are still trapped at the bottom of an ice ravine with no way out," Rainbow countered. Starlit looked up as well, the brief moment of adrenaline-induced giddiness subsiding as the pair came to grips with their new situation. "I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that those things didn't follow us down here," Starlit said. "What were they, anyway? The one at the front looked like a thestral, if you know what that is, but the rest looked like some kind of specter." "I'd warn you that what I'm about to say sounds crazy, but we did just go through the same thing so I'll save it," Rainbow began. "We call them windigos. They're a bit like thestrals in that they're a product of the Wasting, but something about the ambient magic from when the Crystal Princess froze everything over changed how the disease hits them. According to the few eyewitness accounts we have and what precious little knowledge we have from tomes that survived the old war the windigos control the weather out here, but they're solitary hunters." "Since it can summon a hoard of frost ghosts, that would make sense," Starlit commented. "The only thestrals I've ever encountered were pack hunters." "Yeah, tricksy bastards," Rainbow groused. "If we get out of this we'll have 'can break open fissures in solid ice' to their horror show list of powers." "We'll get out of this, but not in our current conditions," Starlit replied. "We need time for those stitches to take in your leg, and both of us need to get our energy back." "I am all for that," Rainbow affirmed. "That stick you shoved down my gullet is over there, and I think I still have some wood in my bags." Gingerly Starlit stood up and used a stuttering spark of magic to drag the bags to herself. She drew out the sticks, kindling, and tinder, but then stared confused at the surroundings. "Uh, where exactly do you intend to set up a fire where it won't melt through the floor?" Starlit asked. If Rainbow had the energy she would've slapped a hoof against her forehead, but she let out an exasperated groan all the same. "Right, ice cavern. I guess we're going to have to share body heat and use our blankets until we can get out of this cavern." "Perfect, just splendid," Starlit complained as she shoved the fire-making materials away. "Just promise that you're not a hugger, my ribs can't take that right now." "Not a hugger, but I am a snorer according to my bunk mates." "My husband and you should compare notes, because he sounds like a stampede when he snores." "You'll have to tell me more about him, he sounds like a swell stallion," Rainbow quipped back as Starlit sidled up behind her on the ground, using her magic to layer a blanket underneath and over them. "Plus you still owe me an explanation for why you're even doing this." "I promise that once we get out of here and find Sun I'll explain everything, but right now we both have to get some real sleep." Wrapped up in as warm of a pocket as Starlit could make, Rainbow Dash slowly felt pain and exhaustion slosh through her mind, pulling her into a deep sleep. It might've been the delirium from the pain in her haunch, but she felt comfortable for the first time in days. * * * Agateous cautiously led Sun through the siding, narrow, and freezing caverns that he seemingly called home, although Sun found himself pining for his desert home with as cold as he was. "What exactly are you doing down here, anyway?" Sun asked after rounding yet another identical looking tunnel. "I've never seen ponies like you before, or even read about it." "Oh, the matriarch can answer any questions you have, but first we have to find your friends, right?" Agateous answered, without really answering anything. "Matriarch? You mean the Princess, because she's actually why my friends and I are out in the blasted tundra right now." Agateous let out a quick snort of laughter as he dissolved another wall to his left and led Sun through it. "You mean Cadance? No, she hasn't left her palace in centuries, not since the Freeze," Agateous continued. "The matriarch is our leader; she keeps us safe, keeps our town warm down here, and helps keep the windigos away." "And the 'windigos' are those monsters that attacked me and my friends on the surface?" Sun asked. "Well, only the one that was physical. All of the other things are constructs that it makes out of ice and snow, designed to scare ponies away. They actually don't really like killing ponies, they just want to chase them off." "That monster opened up a crevasse in the ice that separated me and my friends, as well as sending us falling down a good three hundred feet on a slalom course from hell. I'm pretty sure it meant to kill us." "Well, they do normally give a warning first, and then they go for the throat if you ignore it," Agateous corrected. Sun felt a pit drop into his stomach, cold enough that the surrounding chill seemed temperate in comparison. He hadn't told Starlit about encountering one of those things the other night, and now she could be dead and it was his fault. "Hey, how much longer do you think it's going to be before we find my friends?" Sun asked, his voice jumping a little in pitch. "Oh, probably another couple of hours or so," Agateous answered cheerily, a tone which hit Sun's ears like a horseshoe scraping on glass. "Hours?!" Sun exclaimed. "They could be freezing to death right now, and you're telling me this could take hours? Why can't you just make more walls disappear, brute force this until we find them, they can't have fallen far from where I landed!" "That answer is… complicated," Agateous replied, his voice faltering a bit. "Then uncomplicate it!" Sun demanded, his patience starting to wear thin. "I just have this feeling, deep in my gut, that it'll be a couple of hours until we see them again," Agateous continued. "I swear I'm not being malicious about this, that's just the sort of feeling I'm getting." "A feeling!? That's all you have to go off of?" Sun hollered, forcing Agateous to turn around and clamp a hoof over his mouth. "Shh!" Agateous hissed, "there are things down here that can hear you, and they get pretty angry when they get woken up!" "Like what?" Sun demanded again, pulling Agateous's hoof away. "Frost worms mostly, but also windigos and just the generally unstable nature of these caverns. Ice isn't really the most sturdy thing to make caverns out of, after all." Sun quickly looked around the tunnel they were, which was about to widen out into an open space, suddenly cognizant of the fact that it was impossibly quiet in the caverns. He could hear his own haggard breathing, feel his heartbeat and the lump on his head throbbing. "Right, sorry," Sun replied, taking care to modulate his voice downward. "I'm just scared, and I tend to get angry when I'm scared." "It's okay, just follow my hunch and we should bathe be fi—" A low rumble echoed in the space around them, like a stomach growling except that the cavern they were in was the stomach. "Agateous," Sun whispered as the pair slowly backed into the open space, "what do these frost worms normally sound like when they're moving?" Another rumble, louder and closer, echoed around the chamber. "Like a thousand hoofbeats echoing all at once," Agateous answered. A third rumble, now impossibly close and loud enough to hurt. "Then should we start running?" Sun asked. "I'd say that running is the appropriate response to this," Agateous answered. As the ground in the tunnel in front of them buckled and broke Sun and Agateous turned tail and ran, a massive wall of flesh, ice, and teeth burrowing after them with voracious hunger and murderous intent. * * *