Rainbow Dash’s breath came out in ragged gasps as she sat in a crumpled heap on the hard rock ground of a crevice she had fallen into. A trail of frozen blood went halfway down her right front leg from a gash above her knee she had sustained in the fall. It was almost funny, the blood had frozen before it even had the chance to drip off her.
She frowned in annoyance and looked up at the narrow gap she had fallen through. “And things were going so well...”
Just a couple of minutes ago she had been out walking across the surface of the snow. It was as cold as ever but at least she had been making progress. The day was still “light” out as well so she wanted to get as many hours of walking in as possible.
The sound of the snow cracking and crumbling beneath her hooves had caused her to freeze mid-step. Once she had looked down she saw a fissure spreading in the snow from where she was standing, and then all at once the snow fell away and Rainbow Dash went falling down the crevice before she could do anything. It seemed snow had packed over the surface of the crevice but her weight had been too much for it to bear without anything holding it up beneath it.
Rainbow Dash liked to think that in a better state she would’ve easily had the reflexives to jump out of the way and not fall down. But as cold and drained as she was she just couldn’t react in time. She banged herself against the ice-covered sides of the crevice a few times on the way down before landing hard on the rock—thirty feet below the surface.
“Tch, just my luck,” Rainbow Dash grumbled and stood up. It hurt a little bit to put her weight on her leg but it was a pain she could easily manage. She’d felt worse.
She also supposed she should consider herself fortunate that she wasn’t just stuck at the bottom of a narrow crevice with nowhere to move or anything. The crevice was just an opening into the cave she now found herself in with the actual narrow crevice she had fallen through only starting about five or ten feet above her head. Better or worse she actually wasn’t sure which she should consider the situation as, but there might be something else down in this cave or another way out besides the way she fell in. If anything it also didn’t feel quite as agonizingly cold as being out on the surface. Though her wings were still frozen shut and ice and snow still covered most of the rest of her body.
Rainbow Dash shook herself and started using her hooves to knock off most of that snow and ice before taking a better look around. The light down here was pretty poor but she saw that she was in a small, circular chamber with one large path leading off to her right. Instead of fresh snow down here, the smooth rock walls of the cave were coated in a thick layer of ice in most places. With a glance up she saw it was the same case with the walls of the crevice. She wasn’t sure she could climb back up that, her unprotected hooves would freeze to the ice even if she was able to try shimmying back up. It was only because of the speed she was falling and her body weight that something like that hadn’t happened in the first place. And it was way too narrow to fly up even if her wings were working right now.
“Whatever,” Rainbow Dash shrugged as she started to explore the icy cave. It was obvious she wasn’t getting anywhere just standing around.
The lack of any sort of breeze down here or snow falling directly on her was helpful but it wouldn’t matter in the end if Rainbow couldn’t find anything else. So she quickly trotted down the only path there was, looking for either a way out or something that could help her get up the crevice. Icicles hung from the top of the cave like daggers as Rainbow passed beneath them, not making this place look any more inviting. But she had been through similar places before, something so simple wouldn’t scare her.
She still hadn’t seen any signs of life in this snowy wasteland so Rainbow Dash doubted she would be suddenly attacked by a beast or anything. It was doubtful any sort of creature called these caves its home. No, it was just Rainbow Dash trotting through a cold ice cavern. It didn’t take long before she reached another more open chamber in the caves, with the only other path leading out of it heading to her left. So it seemed like she was just going to be going back and forth for a while.
Another round of shivers passed through her body and Rainbow Dash frowned. This place wasn’t as insulating as she hoped. It would be better if she could fly and not have to walk directly on the cold ground but her wings were still completely useless.
She idly imagined that this must be how a unicorn felt when they couldn’t use magic for whatever reason.
Or how Applejack felt when she didn’t have her hat. That thought made Rainbow Dash snicker, the light humor doing a good job to keep her mood up.
If only she could keep her temperature up too. It might be night soon as well and then Rainbow Dash would lose all of the meager light she had. These dumb caves hadn’t shown her anything yet, it was all just one path so far and there was a whole lot of nothing down here. If she could find a path leading further south or through one of the nearby mountains that would be perfect but it didn’t look like she was going to get that lucky. Instead it was more directionless winding through the caves and it was making Rainbow Dash more and more frustrated. The only positive about this was that she had no way of getting lost.
Maybe she should head back already and try her luck with climbing out of the crevice? But the actual start of the crevice was too high above her head… to even get to the part where she could attempt to shimmy or crawl up she’d need something to help her. Rainbow just couldn’t jump that high without a boost from her wings. She couldn’t climb a vertical wall with just her hooves either, even if it was only a few feet she needed to go. The ice was too smooth and she might get frozen stuck to it, just the same thing she was worrying about earlier.
Nope, it really sucked but she was just going to have to keep walking through these caves for now until she found a way out or something else that could help her.
“What I wouldn’t give for a torch right now...” Rainbow said as she glanced down at her bag. She wasn’t desperate or dumb enough to burn that right now though. But if she could find a stray piece of wood, that would really go a long way.