Twilight Sparkle winced when she peered out of her cave the following morning, the stark contrast between the badlands in the rain and the badlands in the sun was shocking, to say the least. What had once been a dreary and largely-depressing landscape, had become hostile and threatening. The muted greys and dusty browns had become deep crimsons and fiery oranges, all of which rippled under the heat of the sun’s light.
Even from the shelter of her cave, she could feel the heatwaves rolling over her stiff, sore body, and she knew that stepping out into the light would be exceedingly unpleasant… but what choice did she have? “The expedition team hasn’t come back to find me, yet. Or if they have, they haven’t been looking in the right places…”
All through the night, Twilight’s sleep had been routinely disturbed by distant sounds. Every time, she had perked up her ears and hoped with all of her heart that it was the team sending out search parties to find her. Every time, she had been met with disappointment when the sounds came into focus and proved to be nocturnal animals calling to one another.
As she watched the sun slowly rising, Twilight’s mind was struggling with the options presented to her. “This cave is safe, or at least a lot more safe than anywhere outside. But it’s pretty out of the way from where the team was, and it’s not easy to spot. If I want to link up with the others and get out of here, I might have to leave the safety of the cave… but then I’ll be out in the open, and who knows what kinds of creatures I could bump into?”
Her mind wandered back to that odd creature she had encountered the previous night, and her eyes turned to stare at the resin that still clung to her injury. Thorax had been kind to her, even tended to her injuries, but he made it sound like the rest of his kind were not so hospitable. At least not the ones that had been traveling with him. “I’d want to avoid them if I bumped into any, then.”
She returned her attention to the desert and took a deep breath. Eventually, she made up her mind on her course of action and gingerly set off from the cave. The moment she was out of the shade, the hot air began to nip at the fur on her back, and the ground beneath her hooves burned with every step. She let out a few quiet hisses and squeaks, before eventually getting used to the pain.
She made her way back into the trenches that had sheltered her from the giant worm the previous afternoon — a Tatzlwurm, if she was remembering Thorax’s name for it right — and began to navigate them. Every so often, she would leap up to poke her head out and get an idea of her surroundings. The effort was proving tiring, especially under the searing sun. She was already sweating profusely and panting after only ten minutes of this.
All the while, she kept her ears perked up and attentive while her eyes focused on the path ahead of her, trying to retrace her steps. Every so often, a small desert lizard would skitter in her path before disappearing into some crack or cranny in the trench’s walls, or the sound of some unfamiliar scavenger bird shrieking in the distance would reach her and make her squat down out of primal instinct. A dusty breeze washed over her every so often, howling and whistling ominously between the stones and long-dead trees.
Eventually, she came out of the trenches and found herself back where she had landed when she had fallen. The impact marks left behind had blended back into the ground from the rainfall before solidifying under the scorching heat of the day, making it look almost like an ancient battleground. In a way, it kind of was. Except instead of a battle, it was a frantic chase of a predator after its prey.
“But this is good,” Twilight reminded herself shortly after a shiver ran over her at the memory. “I know where this is. I just need to get to high ground, and I can find where the first Tatzlwurm attacked the team! Then I can go after them!”
She turned her eyes up, searching the cliffside for a suitably sturdy place to pop up to. She found one soon enough and disappeared in a flash of lavender light. When she emerged, now tendering a slight headache, she was at the top of the cliff, a few dozen yards away from where she had first taken the leap. She could even see the tree that had stopped her initial rolling, and the rock that had given her the gash.
She cringed when she saw that the tip of the rock was still painted a deep, almost black, shade of red. “Oh… ugh,” she mumbled uncomfortably at the sight. Tearing her eyes away from the spot of her own dried blood, she focused her eyes to look into the distance. She squinted hard against the glare and ambient light. After a moment, she spotted her target.
“Alright… there we go,” she said with a small smile before looking down from her cliffside and grimacing. “I need to save power…”
With a sigh, she realized that she was going to have to get there on hoof. If she wanted to keep her magic reserves intact enough for self-defense, then the only teleport she could afford now was to the bottom of the cliff. Swallowing hard and worrying about letting the trail get cold, she closed her eyes and teleported back to the bottom of the cliff.
Stifling a pained groan, she set off back into the crags. Her breath came in increasingly labored pants as she went, and soon she became acutely aware of just how dry her throat was becoming. In the back of her head, she prayed that the wreckage of that one wagon was still where it had fallen and that it had been carrying some water bottles. She had to keep herself hydrated. She was in no mood to become a dried, shriveled-up corpse, after all.
She briefly thought back on that pool she had spotted in the back of the cave, but soon dismissed it from her mind. Without any means of boiling it, she had no way of being sure that the water there was safe to drink.
It must have been at least half an hour of stumbling blindly through spikes of rocks, coming up to dead ends and yawning chasms before, at long last, she leaped down a small ledge and came upon the scene of the attack. Much like the damage left behind before, the copious hoofprints had softened under the rain, and much of them had already been filled in by dust and sand that had blown in after the fact.
No ponies, though, and no sign that they had come back.
“...Oh, no…” Twilight whispered, her ears drooping as she studied the tracks in more detail. To her horror, the prints that were running away were the most recent ones. The expedition team hadn’t come back. Not this way, at least.
Another wave of heat and burning wind washed over her, and Twilight suddenly broke down into a series of coughs, her hoof flying up to cover her muzzle. The coughs were dry and raspy, stinging her throat and reinforcing her growing need for water. Shaking her head and wiping a hoof over her brow to dispel her sweat, Twilight looked around and caught sight of the wagon’s wreckage.
“Please let there be water, please let there be water, please let there be water…”
Heading to the back, she looked inside to examine the wagon’s contents. To her dismay, it did not seem to be a water wagon. The vast majority of the cargo inside was comprised of camping supplies. Lengths of rope, thick sheets of canvas for tents, rods, and spikes made out of wood for holding said tents together, and not much else.
Twilight’s ears fell flat against her head, a horrible feeling building up in the pits of her stomach. “No, no, no!” she thought desperately before hopping up and lighting up her horn. Growing frantic, the dryness in her throat feeling as if it were starting to choke the life out of her, she began to throw anything and everything that wasn’t water out of the wagon. A sizable cloud of dust was kicked up outside with every new item she added to the pile, the heavy thumps and cracks echoing all around her in the desolate landscape.
Soon, her search had rendered the wagon was all but empty. She was about to give up hope of finding some drinking water when, finally, she spotted a single, lone waterskin pressed up to the back wall, near the driver’s seat.
Praising the stallion who had left it behind, Twilight quickly snatched it up, tore off the lid, and greedily guzzled down the contents. Boundless relief flooded her system as, finally, finally, the drought in her throat began to fade, and the relatively-cool water brought down her temperature enough to be at least acceptable.
Unfortunately, the water was gone much too soon. Twilight shook the cannister a few times to get the last few drops out before slumping to the floor and letting off a quiet sigh. “...They left me, didn’t they?” she wondered to herself in a whisper.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. They had no reason to suspect she had survived, given the nature of the enemy they had faced, and the fact that she had never come back. If Thorax’s assessment had been correct, then it was likely that the team had been harassed by even more of those Tatzlwurms as they attempted to flee. If enough ponies were hurt or enough supplies destroyed, it would only make sense to call the whole operation off and head home.
With her ears drooping, Twilight screwed her eyes shut and took several deep breaths in a bid to calm down her swelling emotions. “I’m all alone out here…”
She briefly toyed with the idea of trying to follow the team, but soon discarded it as unwise. The team had a big enough head start that she had no chance of catching up, and the edge of the Badlands was too far away for her to get there without running the risk of severe dehydration.
Her only hope of getting back home, then, was to survive long enough for the team to make it back and report her as missing. Princess Celestia and her friends would come running as soon as they found out what had happened, and they would find her, and she’d be fine. Heck, maybe Spike could send her a letter, and they could establish a line of communication to make finding her easier.
But there was no telling for sure how long that would take. For now, Twilight had to focus on just staying alive.
Taking one last breath, she forced herself to her hooves and sluggishly leaped down from the back of the wagon. “Well, I just hope they all made it out alright,” she thought to herself before scanning the debris left in her wake for anything of use. If she was going to be stuck here for the time being, she needed to prepare herself accordingly.
In short order, she had picked up the empty waterskin, enough wood and stone for a campfire for the night, and a bedroll to ease her muscles when next she slept. Resting, uncovered on the hard rock in the strikingly cold night of the desert, was a recipe for incredibly sore muscles.
Satisfied with her haul, Twilight turned to stare up the hill to where the expedition team had fled. “...Good luck,” she whispered before looking back in the direction of the cave that she had decided would serve as her home in this blasted desert. A lump formed in her throat. “...We’ll both need it.”
With those words ringing in her ears, Twilight set off at a brisk trot, the blazing sun bearing down on her.