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// Entry 7: In which I dent my face and lose a staring contest 
// Story: Bound Elemental 
// by Kendallonian 
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I was hitting my head against the outer wall for most of today.

Yes, literally. Did you not see the hole in that wall? That was done with my face. I guess I was right when I said I’d break through that before I could get through Twilight’s forcefield. Not that that was my thought process at the time my head was smashing into the wall; I just wanted something to do that would stave off the ever-present boredom.

Yeah, it hurt. What about it?

Oh, hurt is the feeling you get when you should stop doing something? I was honestly not aware. Having a body is a new thing for me. Looking back, it was rather unpleasant on some level.

After a while of smacking my face into the wall I noticed that the crystal in the walls had started to crack, so I kept going. I started digging with my hooves, too. Twilight must’ve been off on an errand or something because I’d already almost gotten an opening large enough to slip through when she came in to see what the ruckus was about.

She’d been ‘lost in a book?’ What does that even mean? Those things are tiny; how could she get lost in one?

Anyway, once Twilight came onto the scene to see what the noise was about I knew I had seconds left to work, so I charged the hole I had made and broke through to the other side. Some part of me had forgotten the hundred-foot drop on the other side, but the other part just didn’t care. Maybe that part had also forgotten I could no longer fly. I tumbled a bit before hitting the ground with my front hooves. I dunno what sort of shoddy work Starlight did when assembling this prison, but the hooves immediately buckled and cracked; Fire started bleeding out of the fissures in small, concentrated jets. 

I didn’t know what that meant, exactly, and I was probably too excited to care. What I knew at the time was that my hooves were hurting and I was, temporarily at least, free, but Twilight was looking down at me from the hole I’d blown in the castle wall, so I ran.

At that point, I’d never had to run in this body before; I’d had plenty of practice pacing around my cell, but running is a different thing altogether; mostly because it takes a lot of energy to keep moving. I am ashamed to say I stumbled a bit getting started, but after that I like to think I did fairly well for a first-timer. I trucked it as fast as I could through the streets of ponyville; I might’ve brushed past a few ponies on the way, but mostly they saw me coming and gave me a wide berth. It wasn’t long before Twilight managed to teleport in front of me, so I cut a hard left through an alley; as I went the torches blowing from my hooves caught on the house to my right, causing panicked exclamations from a good number of ponies as I emerged. Twilight, fortunately, was distracted long enough by putting out the flames for me to get away.

It was about this time that I started getting winded, but I pushed through it; if I could keep it up a bit longer, I’d be home-free, and then I could figure out whatever problem I had with the armor later.

Ahead, most ponies were getting out of the way, but a family of bunnies had just exited the veterinary clinic nearby and hadn’t noticed me. It didn’t matter, though. They’d either see me and scatter, or I’d plow through them. A gutteral gout of flame hissed from my throat, making a noise I didn’t know I could; some sort of growl or snarl. I expected the bunnies to scatter, then, but instead a butter-yellow pegasus stepped into my path.

At first I thought that she must be the most oblivious pegasus in the world, but then I saw that she was staring right at me, and once I looked into those steely eyes, everything was a blur. One second, I was barreling at full speed towards her, and the next, I was sitting down on the cobblestones, skid marks leading up to my hooves, and her face was inches from my own.

And I was scared.

Y’know the feeling that I got from Celestia, that she just exudes more power than any pony had a right to have? Yeah, well it was the same with this one, except she stood at a little less than half Celestia’s height and didn't even have a horn. It made zero sense, yet I couldn’t tear my eyes from hers. It took all I had just to keep myself from quaking in fear.

It had to be minutes spent just staring at each other in the street before she spoke to me, softly but evenly.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?”

I think I actually made a “meep”. A very uncomfortable, cold feeling was expanding in my gut.

I could hear hooves approaching from behind, probably Twilight and her student finally catching up after putting out my fires. I tried to inch around the side of this pegasus in order to keep running, but she held my gaze like there was a set of chains holding us together. I got all of two inches.

“Do you think it’s excusable to just try and scare away a bunch of innocent bunnies like that?” she asked.

There was no right answer to that; at that point I didn’t even care if Twilight put me back in my cell; I needed to get away from this tiny yellow pegasus with the pink mane and the steel eyes. I tried scooting away, but she kept eye contact. The bunnies behind her tipped their heads out to see what was going on.

“Apologize.” She said, gesturing to the bunnies, who were looking up with innocent eyes. Well, except for one, who looked like he had no mercy whatsoever.

My captors were behind me, a very angry yellow pegasus and several distraught bunnies before me, and that cold feeling in my gut was still expanding. My mind was beginning to fade, and I was having trouble keeping myself conscious. Words started forming in my mouth; almost of their own accord, though I wanted to resist them every step of the way.

“I- I’m… I… gotta go-”

“Apologize.” the pegasus said again.

My mouth trembled, my mind felt weak. I was losing awareness of anything except her eyes. I might have started crying again.

“I- I’m… I’m sorry…”

Those were the last words I heard before I blacked out completely.

So, a little update on the condition Starlight’s prison has left me in. it seems that sometimes, when the armor is damaged, it can let out some small jets of flame like it did when I broke my hooves falling from the castle. Flames can exit, but I, specifically, cannot. That means as flames spit out of my body, it gets colder, and my spark has less heat to sustain itself, and I begin to die. The process can also be accelerated by me using up energy to move, say, running at a full sprint for a few minutes trying to evade my captors. It’s the same basic principle that makes it so I have to be fed a log or two every day to keep myself alive, except that during that whole chase I was losing heat at a much more rapid rate than I would, normally.

I woke up hours later, on a bed of burning wood chips and in a brand-new, magically reinforced cell. My hooves had been repaired by Starlight so I wouldn’t lose any more heat that way; according to her my face was also pretty banged up from smashing it against the wall so much.

I should be mad, shouldn’t I?I just found out this armor is a death-trap. I just got shoved back into a locked room after getting stared down by a pegasus a good few inches shorter than myself. Who was that, by the way?

Fluttershy? Really? I’m never going to live this down, am I?

And yet, I don’t think I can bring myself to care enough to get mad. Maybe I’m just too tired to get mad. Maybe a brush with death like the one I had today just makes you glad to be alive.  Maybe after all I’ve seen I’ve just raised my standards for what qualifies as a bad day.

Sparks, that’s a depressing thought.

As a parting bit, I just wanna say that I think this Fluttershy has been the first pony besides Celestia to successfully parley with a fire elemental. Whatever it was she did, you can tell her I found it both fascinating and terrifying and I hope to never experience it again.