Twilight stifled a startled yelp as a dense collection of mud and stone came away from the vertical slope to her right. She took several steps back, afraid a Tatzlwurm was about to pop out with the intent to down her for dinner. She waited for several seconds, holding perfectly still. She didn’t even dare to breathe, lest the quivering in her lungs drew forth some untoward beast. When she was sure she was safe, she let it out in a relieved sigh and pressed on.
It had been like this for a little while now. When she had set out from the cave, adrenaline and the hope of finding Thorax had been her motivation. However, it hadn’t taken her long to get lost. The rain was breaking down the landscape, causing the once familiar sands to slide and run almost like a collection of dark rivers. Her mane wasn’t helping matters either, sagging as it was. She was becoming genuinely tempted to surgically cut it back with her magic if it kept getting in her eyes like this.
To make matters even worse, the thick cloud cover and rapidly dwindling light made it significantly harder to see where she was going with every passing minute. As the light faded, the sounds became clearer. Twilight had been frighteningly aware of the hungry roars of enraged Tatzlwurms all around her for a while now. She had broken her spring once the fear of drawing attention had set in, causing her to slow down and move with an excessive amount of caution.
Now she was slinking quietly along the soaked base of a jagged plateau on her right. She swept her eyes back and forth across to her left, but to her growing dismay, there was nothing to be seen through the rain and darkness.
“This is hopeless,” she thought to herself, grimacing. “I can’t see anything out here. If this keeps up, I’m going to be Tatzlwurm food!”
The clouds overhead flickered and flashed with a series of lightning bolts. The air rippled with the steady rumbling that followed. Twilight folded her ears to drown out the oppressive sound and tried to focus on the terrain. “But I can’t just leave! Thorax needs my help! He used my spell! That means he’s in trouble! Oh, what if he’s hurt?! What if he’s being attacked by something and I’m stumbling around like a blind mare!”
Twilight grit her teeth and pushed on. She needed some way of relocating Thorax. Maybe, if she used her own signal fire spell, she could get him to repeat his? It was a long shot, and it ran the risk of drawing the attention of any other changelings out and about. Or worse, the worms.
“But what choice do I have?” she thought. She bit her lip and looked up into the sky, trying to blink away the water. “If I keep going like this, I’ll never find him…”
She took a deep breath and lit her horn. Her heart beat faster as she gathered energy on its tip, forming it into a dense sphere and filling it with bright sparks. “I just hope he understands what I’m doing…”
With that thought, Twilight pointed her horn to the sky and fired the flare. It rose up high, an almost blinding purple gem set into an equally blinding black canvas. It flickered and faded from view before exploding outwards. A dull pop reached her ears as the badlands around her lit up with a soft lavender glow.
“Now to wait…”
Twilight got down onto her haunches to rest her legs while she waited. She kept her eyes trained on the badlands while her ears listened for any potential threats.
When almost a full minute came and went with no response, Twilight stood back up. “W-why isn’t he responding?” she thought, her heart twisting with fear and dread. “Am I too late? Is he alright? Did he even see it?”
Twilight’s line of thought was brought to an abrupt and unceremonious halt when a patch of ground twenty feet away from her burst open, sending a geyser of mud, stone, and murky water soaring into the air. Twilight cried and leaped away, throwing her hooves over her head to protect it.
Rocks and sticky lumps of mud struck her in the back several times. She gritted her teeth and bore it, curling up into a tight ball to protect her belly. A few seconds later, the unscheduled addition to the rain came to an end. Twilight gulped and stood on quivering hooves. She didn’t want to turn around. She didn’t want to see what had caused that hole.
The spine-tingling growl of a hungry Tatzlwurm told her all she needed to know.
Twilight swore under her breath and broke into a mad sprint, not bothering to look. The earth shook under her hooves as the worm gave chase, its angered roar piercing the air and drowning out the roar of the rain. The noise drew a frightened scream out of Twilight. “I need cover!” she thought, her eyes darting left and right in a frantic search for shelter. If she could lose this thing in trenches like she had the first time she had encountered these things…
There was a jolt in the earth, and the shaking stopped. Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. Without thinking, she allowed instinct to take over and leaped to one side. Not a moment too soon, either. The Tatzlwurm bit down on the ground where she had been less than a second ago, kicking up mud and water and jarring the earth. Twilight grimaced, her heart flipping with disgust when she felt a sharp tug on her tail before she came to a landing.
Grunting, she rolled onto her back to see the monster that wanted to devour her. It rose up above her, slowly, ominously, like a monolith rising from a lake. Even in the low light, there was a definite sheen to its purple scales and black, beady eyes. Its multi-jawed mouth curled open like a flower with a sickening squelch.
Lightning flashed, affording Twilight a view of the inside of its maw. Her eyes widened. There was a chunk of flesh missing from the inner lining of its mouth, in an alarmingly familiar place. Its eyes glared down at her, almost as if in recognition.
“This is the one…” she realized, a lump forming in her throat. “This is the one I had to hurt to get away…”
The low rumble of a roar filled her ears like shifting rubble. The worm then lunged, tentacles reaching with something more than mere hunger.
Crying out, Twilight enveloped herself in magic and vanished from in front of the Tatzlwurm in a flash of light. She reappeared behind it, briefly overcome by a wave of dizziness. She shook it off when she felt the earth shake, and her legs carried her into motion once more. She risked a glance over her shoulder and screamed again when she saw just how close it was on her tail.
It was gaining ground, and fast. She had to lose it, somehow!
“Go away!” she shouted back at it before focusing forward. Her heart all but dropped out of her chest, and her hooves dug into the mud, bringing her to a sliding stop mere inches before she would have fallen into a deep ravine in the mud. In the dark and rain, she couldn’t see how far down it went.
The Tatzlwurm hit her from behind, hard.
Twilight might have screamed out from the pain, but the air was driven from her lungs by the force of the impact. She was thrown over the ledge, her eyes widening and her hooves reaching frantically for the opposite side. She gave a dry rasp of terror as she realized she was falling too quickly. The slick wall of the ravine rose up to meet her, and she met it head-on.
Stars exploded across her vision while a thousand mallets struck her skull at the same time. Twilight fell into a daze, flailing limply through the air as she fell down along the wall of the ravine. She was in the air for a second or two before striking a small platform jutting out from the wall of the ravine. She grunted on impact and curled into a ball, her hooves wrapping around her chest.
She stayed perfectly still for several seconds, a mixture of confusion and relief washing over her. She was alive, thank Celestia. But where did the worm go? Groaning, she lifted her head to look for the creature. There was no sign of it, save for a new hole that had been burrowed into the wall of the ravine a few yards above her.
Groaning, Twilight pushed herself back to her hooves. “Ow… I gotta get out of here,” she mumbled, reaching a hoof up to rub at her sore head. Something warm dripped out of her nose, but she tried not to think about it. She had more pressing concerns than a nosebleed. The Tatzlwurm was gone for the moment, but she had a feeling it would be back. If these things were at all intelligent, then it remembered her, remembered how she had blown a part of its mouth open.
“I really hope this is just a coincidence, and it isn’t out for revenge,” she murmured before closing her eyes and focusing her magic. Her reserves were far smaller than she was used to, sadly. All this time with so little food had left her considerably weakened, both physically and magically. She had it in her for maybe one more teleport before she would be tapped, so she had to make this count.
Something shifted. Twilight’s blood ran cold, and she spun on her hooves. The wall in front of her exploded outward, and she was greeted by the opening maw of the Tatzlwurm. Its tentacles shot out at her with a moist whiplash. She opened her mouth to scream, but her voice was silenced as a tentacle coiled tightly around her throat. Another ensnared her left foreleg, while yet another coiled tightly around her barrel and squeezed.
Twilight’s mouth hung open in a silent scream as the worm slid out of the hole in the wall. The Tatzlwurm craned its head up to the sky before throwing Twilight back and forth like a ragdoll. The tentacles on her body and the rapid movement made it impossible to focus on her spell. She squirmed, she tried to fight back, but its grip was like iron, and she didn’t have the strength to resist.
Her vision was starting to blur from a lack of air. Fire and sweet numbness filled her muscles, while a soft heaviness flooded her veins. Her eyelids began to feel heavy even as her pupils twitched in erratic terror. Was this it? Was she about to die?
“This can’t be how it ends…” she thought, fighting to keep her eyes open. “What will Princess Celestia think? Or my friends?! I haven’t seen my friends again yet. Spike, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Applejack… Thorax…”
She couldn’t fight it anymore. Her eyes drifted closed. “Thorax… I’m sorry…”
Something warm and wet closed around her, and sharp barbs began to dig into her body. She braced herself for the end.
“TWILIGHT!”
A pulse of adrenaline flowed through Twilight’s muscles. Her eyes snapped open just as a bolt of green magic darted into the partially shut mouth with her. The bolt shot past her and exploded against the stem of the tentacles at the back of the worm’s mouth. At once, the constricting force binding her came undone, and she slid out of the roaring Tatzlwurm’s mouth.
She sucked in a lungful of air, and then immediately released it in a confused, terrified scream. She was falling freely through the air, right down into the ravine. This time, there was nothing for her to land on. She was dead-center.
Instinct took over. Her horn lit up with magic, and with the last of her power, she vanished from the air with a loud pop. She came out of the teleport with speed, slamming into the mud on the other side of the ravine from where she had started. She slid and rolled for several feet before coming to a stop, gasping deeply for sweet, life-giving air.
The Tatzlwurm roared again.
Twilight lifted her head. The worm was biting at something, but she couldn’t see it from here. She squinted through the darkness, her scared brain running like a hamster on a wheel to try and piece the situation together.
The small speck flying around the worm suddenly exploded into green flames, and a massive woodpecker emerged from the embers.
“No. Not a woodpecker…” Twilight’s heart sang with joy, and a massive smile spread on her face. “That’s a stone driller!”
“Thorax!” she called out.
Thorax alighted on the worm’s back before it had the chance to spin around and face him. With one quick movement, he darted his head down and began to violently jackhammer into the scales just behind its head, filling the air with a sound to match the comparison. The Tatzlwurm shrieked and thrashed its head angrily from side to side in a vain attempt to dislodge the shapeshifted changeling.
Twilight’s eyes widened as sparks and chunks of scale began to fly away from Thorax’s efforts. The worm tried one last time to spin and snap at Thorax before it finally had enough. With a great roar mixed with an agonized squeal, it dove into the ravine. Thorax leaped from its back as it did so, spreading his new feathery wings wide to slow his descent. Twilight watched him with a gaping jaw as he arced around before coming to a landing in front of her, facing the ravine with his wings spread wide protectively.
Nothing moved. The sound of the worm’s agonized howling was soon muffled by the ravine and echoed into silence. Slowly, Thorax’s wings curled up at his sides, and he turned back to Twilight.
“...Thorax?”
The bird was enveloped in green flames. Thorax stood in the stone driller’s place when the embers parted, a relieved look on his face. “Twilight…” he replied, his lips curling up into a soft smile.
A heavy silence fell over the two. Twilight stared at him, a thousand thoughts and feelings running through her. A part of her wanted to yell at him and ask what took him so long to come to see her, while another wanted to fuss over every inch of his chitin and make sure he was alright. A primal part of her wanted to jokingly ask if he brought that dinner he had promised her.
The part of her that won out, in the end, was the one that just wanted to hug the changeling. Twilight darted forward, wrapping her forelegs tightly around Thorax and pulling him close. He yelped in surprise, and she realized with a small pang of guilt that he was covered in a few spots by resin. He was hurt.
But before she could back away, Thorax returned the hug, pulling her close and burying his face into her shoulder. “Twilight… I’m so sorry,” he whispered, shuddering from something other than the rain sapping the heat out of him. “I… I’m so, so sorry for leaving you all alone. I d-didn’t want to, b-but…”
Twilight shook her head. “It’s okay, Thorax. It’s okay. Relax,” she assured him, giving him a few pats on the back of the head. “You came when it really mattered. When I needed you the most. Thank you. You saved my life, just now. Again.”
Thorax managed a weak chuckle at that before pulling back to smile at her. “Heh. Y-yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I? How many times does that make, now?”
“More than twice,” Twilight giggled.
Thunder boomed somewhere directly over their heads. Thorax jumped in his shell, clutching closer to Twilight as if for protection. Some small part of her couldn’t help but find it amusing that Thorax was scared of a little thunder when he had just fought off a Tatzlwurm for her sake.
He swallowed heavily after a moment before standing up. “Realy, though, I am really sorry for vanishing on you,” he apologized again before holding out a hoof to help her up. “I can tell you all about it on the way.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “On… on the way?” she asked, taking his hoof and getting back to her hooves. “To where?”
Thorax nodded to his side. “Equestria. I’m taking you home.”
Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. “Equestria?! Really? B-but, my supplies, and your work-”
“We’re never gonna get another chance like this, Twilight,” Thorax interrupted her, his expression turning firm. “Just trust me, okay? I can scavenge whatever supplies you need, but we can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”
Twilight stared at him for a moment. She had been wanting to go home, yes, but she hadn’t imagined their departure would be like this. She swallowed heavily before nodding. “A-alright… uh, lead the way, I guess?”
Thorax smiled at her before turning and pointing to what she assumed was the north. “Alright. Come on, this way,” he said before setting off at a brisk canter. Twilight fell into step behind him. She cast a look back over her shoulder, her thoughts wandering to her cave.
It was strange… after all the time she had spent there, leaving now almost felt like leaving a second home. A very poor, very dusty home that gave her what was basically super dysentery, but nevertheless, a second home…
She looked back at Thorax.
No, it wasn’t the cave that had made her feel so at home… it was the friend she had made.
“Hey, Thorax?”
“Yeah?”
Twilight’s smile grew. “I… I’m really glad to see you again.”
He looked back at her, and she could have sworn she saw a faint blush on his chitinous cheeks. “Yeah… I’m glad to see you again, too. I would have come sooner like I said, but, well…” he looked forward, a grimace appearing on his face. “Some… bad things happened back at the Hive.”
“I’m listening.”
Thorax hesitated, then took a deep breath. Twilight listened with rapt attention as he told her his tale. All of it.
Soon, their voices were lost to the white noise of the rain, and their bodies disappeared into the darkness as the changeling led his only friend back towards the border that divided his home from hers.