Twilight stared out into the desolate wastes of the badlands from the safety of her cave. Her eyes swept across the barren crags and jagged trenches, hoping to catch sight of her one friend in this miserable place. He was due for his next visit, and she was eager to see what he brought with him this time. He had promised a hearty meal to lift her spirits, and she was more than enthusiastic about taking him up on that offer.
The sun inched farther and farther across the sky.
Twilight slinked back into her cave to fill her flask with water from one of her makeshift pots before returning to the cave mouth and looking outside again. What would he bring her, she wondered. Most of the food he had brought consisted of varying types of moss, desert flowers, and the rare, alien fruit that made her almost sad to consume them. She often wanted to keep them around so she could dissect them and study them, but due to a lack of tools, writing equipment, and her general hunger, she had regularly decided against it.
She took a sip from her flask. Maybe he’d bring more of those fruits, this time. Maybe a whole bundle? Or perhaps he’d bring something to make sandwiches with? She didn’t know if changelings had bread. It didn’t seem likely, given the lack of resources to make the foodstuff in this area. Maybe they had some sort of equivalent?
Well, they probably did, it was just highly probable that she couldn’t digest it. They were creatures that fed on emotions first and foremost, and as a supplement, they were omnivorous from all she had heard. In a hostile land like this, with such little plant matter, that meant they likely leaned more towards the carnivorous side.
Yeah, she could do without the sandwich, now that she thought about it.
The sun continued to travel across the sky. A dry wind washed through the badlands, sending thin waves of dust and sand drifting through the air. Twilight flinched back into her cave and took a sip from her flask. Any minute, now, Thorax would turn up. Any minute…
Minutes ticked by. Soon, those minutes began to bleed into hours. Twilight watched the skies intently the entire time, with nothing else to fill her time but wait for her friend. There was probably something else she could be doing right now, but really, all of her immediate needs were taken care of already. And so she waited.
And waited.
...And waited.
The sky began to turn orange as the sun dipped for the horizon.
Twilight felt an uneasy shudder run down the length of her spine. She took a comforting swig from her flask before narrowing her eyes into the distance. “Come on, Thorax… where are you?” she wondered to herself.
The sun vanished below the horizon, plunging the world into darkness. The intense warmth of the desert swiftly gave way to a biting chill that made Twilight shiver and withdraw deeper into the cave. She ambled up to her campfire and, with a quick flick of her magic, set it ablaze. She sat down on her bedroll, her eyes staring into the flickering flames while her mind wandered.
“He must have just been held up,” she eventually told herself. It was the only thing that made sense. Something had probably come up in the Hive, and Thorax had been called in to help deal with it. Even with his reputation as the runt, Pharynx was as keen on putting him to work. He was probably just busy.
“Well, I can wait,” Twilight decided with a cheerful smile. “I’ve waited on him for a few days at a time before. I can’t let the promise of food get me too excited.”
She held that thought close for a while, staring into the fire before it was eventually time to turn in for some much-needed sleep.
The next day proved to be much the same. Twilight did a few rudimentary chores early in the morning. She boiled some more water on the makeshift stove Thorax had made for her, and she began to make tally marks in the wall. It was hard to recall the exact number of days she had been trapped out here, but keeping track from now on would do her some good.
She was eventually pulled away from the menial tasks by the hungry growls of her stomach, and she was soon at the mouth of her cave yet again, keeping an eye out for her chitinous friend. But much like yesterday, there was no sign of the changeling. It was harder to keep track of how much time passed this time, as a thick layer of rapidly darkening clouds had rolled in from the distance to blanket the world.
She kept waiting, trying to ignore the pearl of worry that was starting to manifest in the base of her chest. He was fine. She’d gone for longer than this without him before. This was normal. Everything was fine. She just needed to be patient...
When the world began to turn dark with the arrival of night, Twilight’s hooves began to anxiously fidget with each other. Worrying thoughts nipped at the edges of her mind like mosquitos, and she shook her head to dispel them every few minutes. It was fine.
The days dragged on and on. With each one that came, Twilight went through a routine she had grown accustomed to and then parked herself by the cave entrance to wait for Thorax. She tried to move as little as possible to conserve her energy. But even with her efforts, the ache of hunger crept up on her more and more with each passing day.
And with each passing day, her concerns became more and more intense. She couldn’t help but pace and mutter to herself, trying to figure out what might have gone wrong to delay him so much. She tried so hard to distract herself from her worries that she began rehearsing how she would ask him certain questions about the Hive.
It was getting on towards sunset, and Twilight’s hooves clopping and scraping against the dry stone floor of the cave was the only sound in her ears. Her mind was alight with a million thoughts, though, like the theatre in Canterlot, when the audience was chattering amongst themselves before the performance began.
A sound suddenly reached her ears, piercing the repetitive silence that had marked her days for so long now. Twilight stood bolt upright, her ears at attention as she listened for the sound to come again. A few seconds later, she heard it. Something was brushing through the dirt and sand outside the cave. Someone was coming.
Grinning, Twilight turned and scampered for the mouth of the cave. It was Thorax! He’d finally showed up! “See?” Twilight told herself as she went to round the corner. “Everything was fine! I’m sure he has a perfectly good explanation for why he-”
A high-pitched yap jarred her from her train of thoughts. Twilight slid to a screeching halt as her eyes fell on the dust-colored canine in the entrance to her cave. It quickly backed away from her, its hackles rising while its lips peeled back into a warning scowl. It growled at her, long and low.
Twilight blinked, taking a step back herself. The creature resembled a coyote, or perhaps a hyena if a bit smaller and lankier. It looked like it was built to easily slip through cracks in the broken, scarred landscape of the badlands. It came up to around her shoulders, she wagered, if it were to stand tall instead of crouched low like that.
It snarled at her again and advanced on seeing her reflexive backstep. Realizing it had perceived weakness, Twilight quickly planted her hooves and puffed up her chest, making herself as big as possible. Whatever this little thing was, she did not have the energy or resources to deal with it right now. “Best to just scare it off.”
The canine slowed its advance, but it did not retreat. It held its ground, snarling and snapping in her direction. Twilight met its gaze with her own; being sure to not flinch, and stand her ground. Her heart beat just a little harder in her chest as it took another threatening step forward.
“Alright, enough of this,” she decided. Her horn lit up as she channeled magic into her throat, specifically her vocal cords. She inhaled deeply, and then let out a loud shout, as guttural and angry as she could make it.
The sound was amplified many times over, echoing long and loud in the wastes beyond the cave. The canine’s ears folded back, and its tail tucked down between its legs. It let out a submissive whimper before turning tail and sprinting the other way, soon vanishing into the trenches at the base of the hill.
Twilight stared after the animal for several seconds. She took a deep breath before collapsing to her haunches, a long, relieved sigh slipping past her lungs. She lifted a trembling hoof to her chest, feeling her heart thumping wildly against her ribs. “I may have faced some pretty scary things, but wild animals are still near the top of the list.”
After a few seconds, she slumped sideways against the wall of the cave and stared out into the distance. The hope she had felt a moment ago was gone, replaced with confusion and, more than that, loneliness. “...Where are you, Thorax?” she wondered, her ears drooping. “Did something happen? Are you alright?”
The howling of the wind was her only answer.
That night, her hunger became too much. Twilight was forced to depart her cave for the first time in quite a while. She knew better where to look for food this time, but that didn’t make the experience any less unsettling. The distant calls of midnight creatures sent chills down her spine, and after her encounter with the canine earlier, she was even jumpier than normal.
Her path took her through the trenches, over a series of broken crags, and eventually into a small outcropping tucked away behind a collection of large boulders. She was greeted to the site of a few scattered flowers, and a dense patch of moss covering the ground. Her mouth watered. She wasted no time in collecting as much as she could, stuffing the food into her saddlebags.
Emboldened by her discovery, she ventured farther into the desert, hoping to find more food. The moon illuminated her way, albeit not as well as she might have liked. It was waning by this point, allowing only a small amount of light to filter down onto the badlands. Her horn did the rest of the work as she created a small point of purple light on its very tip.
She found a few more patches of vegetation before, finally, something new caught her attention. As she came to the top of a broken series of sharp-edged stones, she caught sight of a distant spire silhouetted against the sky. Her eyes locked onto it, and her heart sped up a little faster in her chest. It was a towering structure that spread out the farther it got to the ground. It was jagged in appearance, with off-shooting spikes and branches pointing up at the heavens, giving the whole structure an ancient, serrated appearance.
“Is that… the Hive?” she thought quietly. She had never seen the structure before, but she had heard Thorax talk about it plenty by now. It sure looked like what he had described — minus the ever-shifting part, but she’d have to get inside for that. She licked her lips and took a few cautious steps forward.
Maybe she could figure out what happened to Thorax on her own? Or leave him some clue that she was missing him? She knew she wouldn’t be welcome in the structure, and the closer she got, the greater the risk. She could leave a sign in the desert, though. He went on patrols often enough that he’d probably notice if she left something for him. Something that he might recognize…
Before she could give it much thought, though, she took a few steps forward. All at once, she felt an inexplicable tugging on her horn, and the light on the tip winked out of existence. Twilight gasped and staggered back, watching with wide eyes as the energy that had made up her light spell was sucked right off her horn. The wisps of light flew off into the distance toward the Hive, soon fading into the night.
“...What?” she asked herself. Confused, she lifted a small pebble in her magic and tried to float it toward the Hive. After a few seconds, her magic was suddenly disrupted, and the pebble fell to the ground with a quiet thump.
She spent several minutes experimenting with the seemingly invisible barrier, her expression growing more and more panicked with each attempt. It was as if something was eating her magic the moment it left her body past a certain point! She couldn’t use any magic at all if she got too close to the Hive. She lifted her eyes to the distant structure, her ears drooping.
“...I can’t go there,” she finally deduced. With her magic, she might have had a chance. Without it, though, she was absolutely helpless beyond this point. If she pressed on, she would fail, and all of this would be pointless.
Taking a deep breath to calm her rapidly fraying nerves, Twilight turned and slowly began to drag herself back for her cave. She paused just before the Hive vanished from view and looked back toward it. “...Please be okay, Thorax,” she whispered. “Please…”
With that, she slid back into the broken crags of the badlands, heading back for her safe haven, with her own loneliness serving as her only companion.