//------------------------------//
// Survival 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

It was like every bone in her body was breaking at the same time. She'd broken a few in her life, she knew what that was like. But that was only a part of everything going on at once. Her heart one moment felt like it was stopping, denying her organs oxygen, the next it was beating so fast it physically hurt in parts of her body that had never hurt before, like it was about to burst. Her lungs were not much better off. One second they felt immobilised and stiff, unable to breathe, then they were being crushed, then something was filling them that wasn't air.
All that wasn't even the worst part, and that was what scared her most. It was all painful, yes, maddeningly so. But not the worst of it, and it terrified her to know there was something even worse than the unnatural, unsustainable pain she was being put through. Something far more sinister and unnatural than any amount of physical pain could ever be, as unnatural as its causes could be.
Her mind felt detached. Not the detachment born from disinterest and cynicism, not that generated by trauma one failed to process, certainly not the kind brought on by meditation she'd heard about. It was something artificial, imposed on her. Like her very soul was being ripped from her being, her connections to her body severed as something pulled on her consciousness like pulling a mollusk out of its shell. And like that, she was horrifically aware that the process would kill her. That at any moment her mind would snap like a neck at a drop in a hanging. She'd watched over too many of those, she thought. For what she could still feel awareness of in her own body, she suspected her own neck had already snapped.
She couldn't feel her guts anymore. She couldn't feel most of her body. She couldn't feel the pain, but somehow that coldness she felt instead was far more terrifying. She couldn't see it anymore, either, or anything else. She was in darkness, her mind in solitude, slowly losing her grip on reality. And what would happen when the last thread had been severed, when she was left alone a conscience in a void without sensation? Would death ensue then, or would she be forever there imprisoned? And what if death was nothing but that, endless nothing in darkened isolation? What if she was already dead?
It was cold. All cold, and alone. The last memory she still had was her spine ripping itself lengthwise as it extended, pushing and tearing through her chest and splintering her ribs. She tried to scream, but she had no voice. She wished to shiver, but she had no body. She wanted to look away, but she had no eyes. There was only darkness and cold. She didn't know how long for. Too long, however long it had been. She wished for it to end, but she couldn't do anything.
Finally, something came. Not pleasant. No freedom and no salvation, but she took it nonetheless. Towards the gaping deformed maws of decay, without hesitation. She let the flames take her, and through the pain they brought she found relief for having found an end.