//------------------------------//
// 7 - The Cottage 
// Story: The Hollow Pony 
// by Type_Writer 
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Time passed, under Zecora's tutelage. Gradually, Pyromancy became more and more natural, and a flame sprung to my hoof with only a little concentration. From there, it only took a little bit of time before I was able to “push” at my training dummy: an old, dried inkwell. Any ink left inside had hardened a very long time ago, and the hollowed Zebra had used it as a paperweight since. From then on, it had become an object of focus for me, since the glass bottle had weight without being too heavy, was a non-uniform shape without being overly-complex, and, should there be any accidents, it would be easy enough to replace.

That first strained push across the table had become a shove, and then a gentle pull. Seeing the inkwell sliding across the worn varnish of the table and bumping against the frog of my hoof became a common sight. Still, any fine control beyond this simple attraction or repulsion seemed beyond my skills for now, and Zecora came to the sad conclusion that I was unlikely to pick up true levitation, one of the more complex abilities of a non-unicorn Pyromancer.

Instead, she pushed the inkwell into my hoof, and told me to keep it there as I lifted my hoof from the table's surface. As I practiced, she gave advice whenever she could find time to break away from her alchemy. Supposedly one of her previous students had said it helped to visualize a claw projected from their hoof, while another had visualized vines wrapping around the object instead. I imagined a gryphon's claw, clasping the inkwell, and that seemed to work well enough.

I noticed, as I continued to practice, that the shaking of my hooves seemed to calm when I focused, whenever I held the inkwell before me. Zecora noticed too, and it gave her hope; those shakes were caused by the long-dead nerves of my flesh and muscle being forced to move. While such a well-known and widespread symptom of extreme hollowing was incurable, it could be worked around, and this was a good sign that meditation would serve me well. Though she did note that as soon as I lost focus, either due to seeing that lack of shaking or by distraction, that it returned. Still, I relished any trace of my health’s return.

From the inkwell, I moved to paper, and then delicate herbs. Zecora's lessons were gradual, as we moved from absolute basics to increased control, and ensured my magical grip was gentle. It would do me no good to hold an object, if the strength of that grip crushed it to dust.

As my abilities grew, so did my duties around Zecora's distillery. Our first order of business was to clean the distillery, as much as we could. Mostly, I think Zecora was tired of cleaning up after me when I knocked one of the book stacks over. We couldn't sort them; whenever I tried by myself I got confused and scared quickly. Whenever Zecora helped, she'd get only a few books in before skimming a title gave her an idea, and then she'd run back to her cauldron to toss a fresh batch of ingredients in, making another fetid brew that clouded the air with noxious fumes. Eventually, we settled for shoving the stacks back to the edges and creating pathways through them.

But that was only the books. From there, the alchemy reagents were next, a heady assortment of powders, herbs, stalks, roots, crystals and glassware. The last she only entrusted to me twice; after we lost two vials of valuable distilled essence, she made the decision to handle those herself.

This categorization brought one undeniable fact to our attention: so many reagents or ingredients had run out long ago, or were dangerously close to being depleted. Even more so than Zecora had admitted before. To continue her mysterious project, Zecora would need more ingredients, ones she could only retrieve nowadays from the former Everfree Forest.

It was true that originally some reagents could be found elsewhere across the world, shipped to Ponyville at great expense, or even in outlying villages or the great conservatories of Equestrian cities. But many of those had been fragile, temperamental plants, and could not be relied on to have survived in a world of endless sunset. All Zecora could confidently rely on, in numbers great enough to replenish her alchemical stocks, were the toughest of herbs, the hardiest of roots, and perhaps, just perhaps, a few flower species unique to the Everfree to begin with.

Zecora told me to go practice again while she packed, and I did so. I set the ancient inkwell on the table, and began to stare at it. Already I had memorized every feature of the simple object, from the faded label, to the hardened dribble of ink down the side, to the hairline crack up the wide neck—a scar gained when I dropped it, early on in my training. Soon enough, my eyes began to wander, watching Zecora. For the first time since she had taken me on as her apprentice, she doused the flame below her great black cauldron, and the flames hissed and spat as they turned the water to steam.

As the flames cooled to embers, she retrieved a small bag from behind an old, mouldy shelf, and then blew the dust off. She opened it up, then pulled out several small clay jars, marked with a blue alchemical symbol I didn't recognize, and the corked necks sealed further with wax. She retrieved five in total, and checked the seals, before she set them aside. Then, a coil of mouldering rope. I had to guess, perhaps fifty leg-lengths if unrolled? She tugged it between her hooves, satisfied at the tensile strength, then set it beside the clay jars.

The next item she retrieved, I guessed, had to be the last. A large, tightly rolled bundle of leather, on which she undid a drawstring and pulled open. From within fell a ragged set of armor, and a familiar red banner wrapped around it. After a moment's thought, I remembered where I had seen such a banner; it was the defining feature of our “protectors” atop the wall. A disguise, then?

To my surprise, Zecora reached back into her bag, and pulled out a second bundle of leather, another ragged set of armor. One for each of us. But how did it fit? Then she further strained credulity when she reached in once more, and this time pulled out a sheathed blade. Impossible, I thought. The length of the blade alone must have been longer than the exterior of the bag. Finally, she caught me as I stared.

She chuckled as she set the sheathed sword down on the table before me. “I see your eyes widen, but they do not deceive; it is an old unicorn creation, a bag from which many things can be retrieved.”

“H-how…?” I stammered, still looking at it.

“Your inkwell, take it in hoof. I'll show you myself, should you need more proof.”

My hoof shook as I picked it up and held it out. All Zecora did was hold open her bag, and allowed me a glance inside. When I did, I was overcome with nausea again—the darkness within the bag, it was familiar to me. It was the same darkness I saw when I stared into my cutie mark, that I had stumbled into and gotten lost within. Somehow, I could feel they were the same. Was I simply staring into two windows to the same place, the same dark abyss?

Whatever the case, I shook my head and cleared my mind, and let the inkwell drop into the mouth of the bag. It crossed an invisible threshold, and winked out of existence, lost below the dark surface.

Zecora nodded. “Your inkwell is now stored in a space within the bag. But reach your hoof inside, think, and then grab.”

Hesitantly, like a foal told, for the first time, that they can reach inside the cookie jar without consequences, I pushed my hoof in. It too crossed that invisible boundary, disappeared into the inky abyss, and it felt…cold. Clammy. The little fur I had remaining stood on end as I groped around aimlessly inside the bag, reaching impossibly deep. I shoved my foreleg in, up to my shoulder, and still felt no bottom, nor the sides of the bag.

Then I thought of my inkwell, and the cracks and stains and faded label, and it was there, pressed against my hoof, like somepony inside had passed it to me. I pulled out my hoof, and the inkwell came with it, untouched, unchanged, like it had never left my hoof. There was still a pervading sense of wrongness inherent in that abyss, but I understood what Zecora was getting at: this bag could indeed hold a nearly infinite number of items, so long as they fit into the mouth.

With a nod, Zecora placed the bag on the table, and picked up the sheathed blade. Pulling it from the protective leather, she withdrew a wide, flat blade, rounded up to the tip before it became a sharp edge. It was streaked with rust, but as my mentor swung it through the air a few times experimentally, I noted time seemed not to have dulled the edge of the blade as it had so many others.

"My Homeland is quite unlike yours - savannah and Jungle, not plains and fogged moors. When one needed a path through the thickest of vines, a sharpened machete saved a great deal of time."

She turned the blade around, and offered me the grip of the weapon. “You will take the lead, blade in hoof and eyes to the front. There is no greater teacher than experience, and we have many herbs to hunt.”

Slowly, I nodded, and took the grip. It felt heavy in my hoof, and I started to feel the machete slip loose as soon as Zecora relaxed her own grip. I followed it as it slid, and the tip thumped against the floor as I focused on strengthening my ethereal hold on it. Never before had I needed to focus on the leverage of a held object—this was completely new, and almost wholly foreign.

As I turned and twisted my hoof, and furrowed my brow in concentration, Zecora busied herself by equipping one of the sets of armor. Now that I had the time to examine it close-up, I could see it was mostly crafted of crude leather, wrapped and bolted together. Metal rings linked the joints, and rattled as she moved, and caused her to click her tongue. I could also clearly see the symbol stitched into the tabard; a dark red apple, over a lighter red background.

I was too focused on Zecora, and the machete slipped from my hooves again. She jumped slightly as it clattered to the floor, then shook her head, before she picked it up and slid it back into the sheath. “Worry about that later, my Hollow student, and put the other set of armor on. You will have plenty of time to practice…” She paused, sounding out words silently for a moment, before she hesitantly finished her sentence with “...out of town?”

She shook her head and turned back to her ingredients shelf, taking note of what she lacked while I pulled on the armor.


*	*	*


Zecora didn't bother to lock her door. I didn't comment on it, but it seemed an intentional decision, not borne of forgetfulness. Maybe that was an old Ponyville habit, from before my time. As we walked to the ramshackle wall that kept us safe, I wondered idly again what this town had looked like, before Equestria became what it was today.

Had it been a quiet, sleepy village? Or a bustling little burg, with foals playing, the sounds of laughter and the smell of baked goods wafting through the air? All that remained now was a distinct sense of loss, that something wonderful was gone from the world, never to return, but I didn't even know what that thing was, not really.

We approached the wall after a short walk through the empty streets. This was one of the few places in town I had not wandered, as the guards here seemed the most present. Even in her madness, it seemed the Hollow Hunter could see those that kept more of their mind, and knew to assign them here.

The four of them stiffened up when we turned the corner, their embered eyes playing over our own, as if they expected…something. A trick, an attack perhaps? We had no such plans, and as we drew closer they took notice of the armor, relaxing somewhat. Zecora had already told me she would do the talking.

“We need to go outside of town, for an hour or three. I have a standing pass from Princess Twilight, if you wish to see?”

They looked amongst themselves for a few moments. I caught a whisper of “...Princess who? She didn't say Celestia…” but another hollowed militia pony cut them off with a snarl. After a moment, one of them nodded, and they stood aside, two of them moving to open a large pair of doors set into the wall. They pulled back a giant wooden deadbolt, before they shoved one of the doors open, only a few hoof-lengths. 

All they said was, “Shout to the guards atop the wall when you're coming back in,” before they waved us through. We squeezed through the cracked-open door, and our armor clanked and fabric rustled as we passed through. It had simply been that easy to get back outside of Ponyville.

In an instant, I felt foolish, as I looked at the deep, endless fog that surrounded us. It looked exactly like it had before, when I had first entered Fort Ponyville. The walls stretched endlessly, our only guide, and only the strange, gnarled shapes of trees in the fog indicated there was anything but the wall.

Zecora paused too, taking it all in. Her embered eyes swept through, and searched. For what, I had no idea.

I shivered slightly. The dampness of the mist had already crept into my bones, and overpowered the warm sunlight that managed to penetrate above. This is a world gone mad, I thought to myself. Ponies are no longer welcome here. Such a small attempt at normalcy, as we cowered behind our ramshackle walls.

Then Zecora started to walk, and I had no choice but to follow her into the deep mist, or else be left behind. She withdrew the sheathed machete from her bottomless saddlebag once more, and the strap of the sheath looped itself around her neck, and drew in close to her armor, until the sheathed blade was flush against her side. The side facing me, I noticed, so that we could both draw the machete if needed. Such a complicated operation, and she barely looked at the object as she refastened it around herself.

We walked. I know not for how long, nor where we were going. Zecora seemed to find landmarks in the fog where I saw vague shapes, and more than once she slowed down, changed course, as we heard some beast shuffle past, shrouded just as we were, amongst the mist. Only once did she pause, and we doubled back on ourselves, and immediately afterward she gave a thoughtful “Hmm…” as we found a rotten bit of fencing.

Eventually, I couldn't take it. It was a pain to speak under my breath, to try and talk at anything other than conversational volume. But I had to murmur out a question, and I saw her ragged ear flick as I spoke, listening to me.

“W-where are w-we...we g-going?”

She didn't respond for a moment. Her ears flicked around, as she listened to see if anything changed course towards us. When she was satisfied, she responded in a murmur of her own.

“To enter the Everchaos on our own would invite an untimely end, so instead? We are going to visit an old friend. She was not quite as dedicated to herbology as I, but I hope that her garden is a place which we can try.”

I nodded. It was as cryptic an answer as ever, but it satisfied my curiosity.

The ground before us split, and a creek cut a sharp cliff through the earth. I couldn't see the other bank, but Zecora smiled, and we turned to follow the flow of the quiet, burbling river.

Her smile shrunk when we reached the bridge, however. The shape of it loomed from the fog as we approached, and I inspected it as we came closer and it grew in detail. It seemed as if a fire had spread from the other bank to the little footbridge, and while it still stood, it leaned and creaked worryingly in its foundations. One side of the railing had already fallen into the river, and chunks of painted, sodden wood littered the riverbank below.

She placed a hoof on the boards, and they creaked loudly as the sound echoed through the fog. With a wince, she stepped back, and instead moved back up the river a few paces. Dutifully, I followed her, and together we half-climbed, half-slid down our side of the river bank. Zecora gave the foundations a wide berth, and we splashed through the hoof-deep water of the river, fording across to the other side. The chill of the water crept into my hooves again; An unsettling feeling, and yet a familiar one.

As we scrambled up the riverbank on the opposite side, I could already feel a change in the soil and the grass atop it. It crunched wetly, rehydrated by the fog, but something a very long time ago had dried this grass, killed it. The soil felt grainier than before, and the topsoil was grey when I looked down. Ash formed a thick, muddy boot over the ends of my hooves.

A dark expression had overtaken my teacher's face as we pushed onward, following the ashen outline of a hoof path leading away from the bridge. She still seemed to know where she was going, until a dark mass faded into view, then clarity. Here, the underbrush had grown, burnt, and tried to regrow around the blackened branches and vines once more. She nodded, and drew her machete.

"A lesson now, I hope to achieve: watch my blade, and with its weight how I cleave." I nodded in turn, and she swung her hoof in a wide arc, the blade a blur that chopped a dull green gash through the dead brush. What did not cut crunched and cracked instead, twigs showering the forest floor as Zecora began to brutally hack a path forward.

After a few minutes of chopping and a few leg-lengths of success, she nodded as she panted and huffed from the exertion. “I can see the cottage beyond, but it is deep within the thicket. Take the machete and practice your strike, but pace yourself, as progress will not be…” She trailed off, panting. “...quick.”

I nodded and took the tool in my own hoof, and held onto it as tightly as I could. It still slid, but I felt moderately confident I would be able to keep my grip. Then I paused, and looked for a good place to cut.

When I continued to hesitate, Zecora stepped forward once more. She gently took my foreleg as I held the machete, and guided my hoof towards a specific vine. “Begin here, swinging fast and true. My cuts were not random, but the beginnings of a path through.”

I nodded, and with her at my side, I began to notice the strained vines, and the branches bent from withering and moisture. They were weakened, and if I cut them where she directed, I could disassemble the whole tangle of branches before me in short order. I wound the machete back, holding it across my chest and over the opposite shoulder, before I swung it across in a wide, horizontal slash.

The branches squeaked as the blade glanced off them and jerked upwards, and I panicked. It fought to escape my grasp, but I held it tightly as it came back down, landing with a wet “chop”—and a sharp gasp from Zecora.

I turned, fearing the worst, and those fears weren’t terribly far off. The blade of the machete had buried itself—or rather, my wild strike had buried the blade—into Zecora’s foreleg, easily slicing into the bone. If I’d swung it with any more power, it might have chopped right through, and we both would have lost a leg in recent memory. “Z-Zecora!” I gasped. “I'm s-sorry...one s-second...I'll p-pull it out…”

She hissed, eyes clenched shut at the pain. I released my magical hold, and chose to use my teeth instead. As my teeth clamped down on the grip of the machete, she yelled something in a language I did not recognize, before we suddenly pulled away from each other. The blade came free with a sucking noise, and black ichor welled out around the wound, sluggish and thick, nearly coagulated already.

With a growl, she rubbed her foreleg, then gently pulled the machete out of my mouth and placed it back in my hoof. “Practice makes perfect, or so the pony expression goes. But practice takes time, as everyone knows. Hold the blade tight, and do not let it leave your sight.” She pointed back at the underbrush with her good hoof, and then stepped back several places in case I had any more...accidents.

This time, my attention focused on a branch that lay diagonally across the path, a fallen sapling that was held in place by a dozen other branches. I brought the machete over my shoulder, swung it up and over my head, and then down on the bark as hard as I could.

The machete jerked out of my hoof as I face planted into the ashen mud. Behind me, I heard Zecora sigh, and limp forward to retrieve the tool from where it was buried in the tree. “Swing fast and swing hard, but it is no hammer, no greatsword. Do not exhaust yourself, with all your strength in one swing - the blade is sharp, for now, and lesser chops will achieve the same thing.”

I wiped the mud from my face and nodded, as I took the blade once again in my hoof. Swing not too hard, but swing fast, lots of lesser chops. Okay. I focused again on the log, and started out slow with little more than a tap, then increased in strength.

Soon, I found a bit of a rhythm. I could snap the blade into the log three or four times, with a pause in between to rest. Occasionally as I did, Zecora stepped forward to guide my hoof, adjust my angle or swing. With her guidance, there was soon a notch growing ever larger in my chosen log.

After a little while of this, Zecora nodded, and stepped back again. My focus began to drift to my grip on the machete, and how adjusted I had become to its weight. I hadn't lost that grip so badly since the first time, and now it seemed to be gradually steadier with each swing. I felt, with some confidence, that I could do that for a while.

What helped was that, surprisingly, I didn't seem to be getting tired. Zecora rested behind me, as she tended to her ichor-soaked leg, but I could easily stand here all day. My rhythm of four chops and some rest, then four chops and some rest, seemed to take no stamina at all in the long term. My bones ached, to be sure, and my muscles were sore. But they had always been as such. It was already a struggle to ignore them and their decay, that this exertion barely seemed to affect them any.

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud crack, as the blade of the machete went right through the log. It split in two, and fell into the soft, muddy soil with a pair of thumps. I staggered, off balance again for a moment. Behind me, Zecora stood up, and as I found my hooves, she trotted past me with a wise smile. She paused only briefly to inspect the rotten wood I had laboriously chopped through, before she stepped past it. I followed, and together we clambered through more of the underbrush, but we paused at a fallen branch that now blocked our path instead.

Zecora turned to me, then took the blade of the machete. She guided it as I held the handle, and she placed it at the base of the branch. “Again.”

I nodded to her, Student to Teacher, and I began to chop at the next branch as she sat down and nursed her leg wound once more.


*	*	*


Quite some time later, I chopped through a particularly overgrown root, and the wall of vines and branches that stood in our way suddenly fell apart. I jumped as it did, but Zecora seemed excited, and she stood up and limped past.

We seemed to have smashed through the undergrowth into a large clearing, which sheltered a small, thatched-roof cottage. The crunching of the burned grass came to an immediate end. As I looked down, I could see that the grass here simply…hadn't burned. A hard, arbitrary line divided the burnt grass from that which had not. Some of the blades of grass weren’t even uniformly burnt, the ends or bases singed and the rest untouched. Some form of protection lay over this clearing, isolating it from the fire that had raged around it so long ago.

It was…strange to see normal grass again. It was still dead, sun-scorched and wilting, but it was undeniably in better health than the rest of the grass surrounding the clearing had been when it died.

There was the sound of a knock, then another, hesitant. My eyes looked back up to Zecora, who stood at the door of the cottage. She rapped the wooden surface with her hoof a few times, then moved to peer in the grimy, ancient windows. I followed behind her to catch up, and as I did, I examined the cottage itself.

The structure seemed strong, at first glance. While the thatching of the roof was long decayed, it only revealed the proper roof underneath, which had held up far better than the façade. Judging from the quiet dribble of a gutter nearby, that roof was still waterproof, and the walls were all intact. Far too many of the buildings in Ponyville could not say the same.

As I got closer, however, the illusion fell away. The whole house creaked and shifted as the wind blew through the clearing, thin fog swirling around us. Almost all of the windows had long since been shattered, some inwards, some out, the glass fragments worn down to powder. A smaller stream crossed in front of the cottage, a natural spring that had once flowed under a tiny decorative hoofbridge. Now it was dry, and the bridge had collapsed into kindling.

I stepped over its remains and joined Zecora at the door. She was still peering inwards, but after a moment, she sighed. “I do not believe my friend is around, and judging from appearances this place has never been found.” After pausing to think for a moment, she shook her head. “I think if she were here, she would want us to take what we need. No more, no less, and her forgiveness I will later plead.”

I nodded, and she sighed before pressing a hoof to the doorknob. The brass fitting refused to budge, however, and she grimaced before shoving her shoulder against it. There was a loud crunch as the doorframe splintered inwards, and the extended deadbolt easily smashed its way through the rotten wood of the door frame. The door scraped inwards on rusted hinges, and we glanced around the dusty interior.

It must have been a very nice cottage, once. Even now, we could see the low ceilings, plush, patched furniture, and soft colors. But after so long, mold had begun to overtake the furniture, and the colors had dulled to shadows of their former selves. We walked through the living room without saying a word, then froze as we heard a skittering sound from inside the house.

“W-wha-?” was all I got out before something grimy, fuzzy, and dog-sized bolted around the corner, hissing wildly and giving off an awful cacophony like chattering teeth as it flew right at us like a cannonball.

Whatever it was slammed into my barrel, and I could hear screeching, of animal and of metal, as it began burrowing through the side of my armor. I screamed and flailed, and desperately tried to tear it off. Zecora was there too, with her machete drawn, and smacked at it wildly with the hilt. Then pain shot up my side as it pierced the armor, and Zecora scowled.

There was a heavy thwack that brought all noise to a halt, save my pants and whines. Zecora withdrew the bloodied blade, readying it for another swing, but it didn’t seem to be needed. My hooves scrabbled at my side as I grabbed the fuzzy mass, but when I tried to rip it away, stars filled my vision. Whatever it was had bitten in, and had anchored itself to my flesh.

Zecora winced, and smacked my hooves away. As I lay on my side, panting, bleeding, she wedged the flat of the machete in between me and the creature, trying to lever it off. Finally it came loose, but it took a pound of flesh with it. Zecora held it up for examination as I was left, whining and trying to find my hooves. I could see it had a pair of long ears hanging limply from its head, and giant buck teeth, flanked by far, far too many smaller molars on either side of the maw. The fur looked like it might have been originally white, but age and strange magic had corrupted it, and now it appeared to be more of a grimy grey-brown.

Eventually, she nodded sadly. “The closest companion to my old friend, from before the sun set. She must have left it to guard this place, but the Everchaos twisted it yet.” She looked down at me. “Stay here while I check the garden, and bury the cottage’s resident demon.”

I couldn’t help my weak shaking, but I nodded, and focused on the pain as Zecora trotted to the back of the house, opened the door, and stepped out. Then I was by my lonesome as I bled and swore gently under my breath on the floor. All I could do was press my hooves against the ragged wound.

The armor that had been meant to protect me now hung off my side in ragged flaps. That thing had claws that could tear through metal in seconds—I was lucky that Zecora had been able to kill it in a single blow, or it may have burrowed inside further. I was able to regenerate to some degree, but I had no idea how the magic keeping me alive would handle ruination on such a scale.

Eventually, the flow of the ichor slowed, and I felt I had to try and move. Zecora would want me mobile, and I did her no good lying here on the floor in a pool of my own blood.

I hissed as I shifted. The movement opened my wounds anew, with fresh pain accompanying them. My hooves were nearly glued to my side now, but I had to tear one of them free for support, to try and stand. Ichor spattered into the puddle below as I shakily rose, and managed to stumble over to the decayed couch. Picking a less-moldy section, I fell onto the cushion, feeling something inside loosen up. I started to feel light-headed.

Tearing my other hoof free gave the cold twilight air an avenue with which to penetrate my wound. I gasped as I gathered up the scraps of armor hanging freely, balling them up and pressing them into the wound. Maybe it would stop the bleeding, maybe it would help keep them together for repairs later.

I was very light-headed now. I shifted, and felt the couch slipping out from under me. I fell onto my side, laying on the rest of the couch. Thankfully, my bleeding side wasn’t the one pressed up against the dead mold. Darkness crept in around the edges of my vision, and I let it whisk me away, hoping that the pain would be lessened when I awoke.


*	*	*


I was slowly woken up by Zecora. As she fussed over my wound, she hummed and muttered to herself in her strange native language. As I shifted, she smacked my muzzle.

“Such a wound, you have made it worse! Now it is wider, you stupid horse.”

Groaning, I coughed ichor across the couch cushion, before laying it down again. “Did…did you f-find…?”

She scowled. “No, the herbs are rotten and by the ground subsumed. They remained in the dirt until by decay, or the beast, they were consumed. They are useless, and now our journey out here has been fruitless.” She used her teeth to tear open a small bag, and pressed the healing poultice against my reopened wound.

“Oh...” I uttered sadly, barely noticing the cold pain from my side now as Zecora treated it. She noticed, and shook me gently to keep me awake.

“A major setback, that is to be certain. I know of only one other place we may find the herbs we need, behind the fire curtain. Beyond the Everchaos, to the southeast, lies the Hayseed Swamps of Fire. My mentor resides there, hidden away to attain an understanding of Pyromancy that is higher.”

“F-fire Swamps...b-beyond the Ev-Everchaos...ok-okay...” I looked back up at her. “D-do you th-think we…can m-make it that f-far?”

She shook her head. “A caravan of undead, perhaps, but not on our own. I have faith we will make it safely to her home.” She closed her eyes. “There are ponies in town who owe me favors, payment for services rendered. With their aid, we could make it there with skins unsundered.”

I nodded, and Zecora sighed, before she grabbed my armor and hauled me to my hooves. My legs were jelly, and my side still dribbled blood, but I found my balance soon enough. I could walk. Together, we began the slow journey out of the clearing, through the woods and fog, and back to the gates of Fort Ponyville.