//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6: Salvation 
// Story: Death, Sacrifice, and the man in blue 
// by MrTyrannousaurusX 
//------------------------------//

Levi emerged from his room with a yawn, flattening his shirt against his chest as he walked down the hallway and to the ladder down to the first floor. “Good morning Levi!” Twilight called out as he slowly made his way down the ladder.

“Morning” He yawned, his eyes immediately shifting to the small purple reptile that was sitting in the seat next to Twilight at the table who oddly enough wasn’t freaking out at the sight of him. The reptile turned around, revealing large emerald green eyes similar in size to that of Twilight’s, and locked eyes with him as he looked into Levi’s green eyes. Levi shifted his glance to Twilight, who somehow caught on to what Levi was looking at her for.

“Don’t worry, he knows about you.” Twilight said, continuing to eat her breakfast. Levi gave her a questioning look which Twilight saw and clarified “He knows about humans, he isn’t afraid”

“Good” Levi said, pulling the chair back causing it to scrape audibly against the floor as he sat down and grabbed his silverware. He was sitting at the seat across from the small reptile, relieved that he wasn’t freaking out at the sight of him like the ponies at Ponyville. The thought of Ponyville brought back memories of the incident with Soarin’ which made Levi dread the thought of going back to Ponyville, but part of him knew inside that going there was important. He didn’t know why he knew this, but he felt like it had something to do with the prophecy. The second the thought entered his mind he immediately thought of that painting with Levi and Alan, he closed his eyes trying to shake the thought out of his head. 

“So…” The reptile finished his mouthful before swallowing, “How’d you get here? There haven’t been humans here in forever” 

“I fell” Levi replied in a straightforward tone, not really wanting to explain how or why and just wanted to enjoy his breakfast. 

“You fell?” He questioned, looking at him with a puzzled expression.

“Yes I fell. I know it sounds hard to believe but I was in my world one second next second I’m here” Levi replied.

“What’s your world like?” “Spike!” Twilight scolded out of the blue. “Don’t ask so many questions, we’re trying to eat, there’ll be plenty of time for questions on the way there” Twilight stated, earning a silent ‘thank you’ from Levi. 

‘So Spike is his name?’ Levi thought as he ate, surprised at how good it tasted considering a pony cooked it. A few seconds passed without a word as the three ate in silence, the aura of sleepiness looming over them, especially from Levi who was the exact reverse opposite of a morning person. 

“So Levi, did you sleep well?” Twilight asked, breaking the silence.

“It was alright..” Levi responded in a low, gravely voice like he was sick. Levi couldn’t stop thinking about Alan. As much as he wanted to get his mind off his best friend, he couldn’t. The dread he felt everytime he thought about the painting, the picture still fresh in his mind. Levi couldn’t begin to think about how wrecked he’ll be when that happens, seeing his best friend die in his arms. “I..need to use the bathroom” He said quickly, excusing himself from the table.

“You remember where it is ri-” “Yep!” Levi exclaimed, cutting her off as he climbed the ladder and stepped into the hallway off the second floor. He sped walked to the bathroom, walking in there and turning the light on as he shut the door behind him and placed his back against it. 

He groaned out of frustration. He wanted so badly to just forget the painting even existed, the prophecy even existed, after all he couldn’t tell anyone so forgetting the prophecy wouldn’t be that big of a deal. He rubbed his face with a groan, getting off the door and looking at himself in the mirror. 

His eyes looked tired, which was normal for him this early, and his hair was messy and looked like a bird's nest. He used his hand to run his hand through his hair multiple times and combed it with his hand. As he looked into his eyes in the mirror, he couldn’t believe that just yesterday he was in his own apartment in his own bed. He snickered at how ridiculous it sounded, living in a world completely occupied by ponies, if someone had told him that last week he would’ve laughed in their face and asked if they were alright. 

Levi sighed as he looked at his tired face in the mirror as he filled up the small purple cup on the sink with water, drinking it in two loud gulps which relieved his dry throat. As much as Levi didn’t want to think about it, he began to think about where Alan could possibly be. That somewhere in this large unknown world his best friend was wandering somewhere, alone, worried, probably thinking about Levi as well. Levi thought about maybe Alan was somewhere in Canterlot, or somewhere in Ponyville, or somewhere out there.

He put his hands on either side of the sink and looked into the mirror, he noticed a sad expression was beginning to form on his face. “Dammit Alan..” He sighed, rubbing his chin with his fingers.

His mind wandered to the cook, that fateful cook that brought him to this place. He wondered why Alan was so persistent to cook the batch and how he ran to the table to finish it, and how he fought away from him to cook it, it’s like he somehow knew what the cook was going to do. It was like he wanted to go there, like his goal was to come to Equestria. Levi brushed off the thought.

The thought he couldn’t brush off however was where Alan was. Levi heard a knock at the door followed by “Are you alright?”

“Yeah I’m fine” He replied through the door, turning to the door and opening it to be met by Twilight with a puzzled expression. “Why were you in there for so long?” She asked.

“Oh you know, human stuff” He answered, walking past her and making his way to the ladder. “Come on! Let’s finish up, we got somewhere to go don’t we?” He said as he walked to the ladder. ‘If I wanna find Alan, I better man up and just go to Ponyville’ Levi thought as he climbed down the ladder. ‘What’s the worst that can happen right?’

SHUNK! A wooden arrow pierced a small white rabbit, ending its life instantly and pinning it to the dirt. “Yeah!” Alan whispered, pumping his fist as he emerged from the bush he was hiding in. He wiped the leaves off of his hoodie with his free hand as he approached the rabbit that was pinned to the ground lifeless. He pulled the arrow out and tucked into the waistband of his pants and grabbed the rabbit by its back legs. He held the rabbit in front of his face and admired his catch for a few seconds before turning around and started to jog back to his camp. 

He had gone a mile or so out from his camp, if it could even be considered a camp, and because of that marked his way there a trail of rocks varying in sizes. Ever since Alan fell into Equestria, he was terrified of the forest he was thrusted into and walked for a few miles calling for help from anyone who can hear. When he found nothing but more forest, he knew help wasn’t coming anytime soon. So he decided to bunker down and set up a camp that would help him get by for the time being and he used the survival skills that his father taught him to help him. He created a bow with just sticks and string and sharpened sticks to use as arrows.

After hours of hunting away from his camp, he came back with only a small bird that he cooked and ate in less than 10 minutes. He realized the hard way that hunting for survival was going to be more of a difficult task than he anticipated. However, there was one thing that he couldn’t find that worried him the most more than anything else, even more than the fear of the unknown of what could be lying in wait in the forest. Water. Even after traveling a few miles into the woods, he couldn’t find a single source of water. No ponds, rivers, lakes, anything. This worried Alan because without water he knew for sure it was only a matter of time before he dropped dead from dehydration, and even though he could survive more than a week without water and with just food he remained extremely worried. 

He woke up that morning hungry and with a dry and painful throat. The small bird that he ate could barely keep him satiated for the day and he went to bed that night on the cold hard ground with a growling stomach. Despite his tiredness and fatigue, he managed to jog the mile in a reasonable amount of time and arrived there panting which only made his already dry throat worse.

He leaned his bow against the tall tree that stood in his camp and took his arrows out of his waistband and leaned and also leaned them against the tree. He dropped the rabbit next to the rocks that were aligned in a circle on the ground with a pile of sticks in the middle that he called a campfire. He went over to a random tree and pulled one of the branches down and tore a handful of leaves from right and walked back over to the campfire. 

He quickly rearranged the sticks into a tent formation just like his father had taught him and dumped the leaves inside the tent formation of sticks. He sat down by the firepit and grabbed the rabbit carcass and grabbed his switchblade that was hooked onto his waistband and flipped it open. Just the sight of the rabbit made Alan’s stomach growl like it was screaming for food. Attempting to skin the bird he had eaten was an extremely difficult task, considering the only animal he’s ever skinned before was a squirrel that was half the size of the rabbit.

He put the blade up to the rabbit as its soft fur tickled his fingers and attempted to slice off some of the skin, sawing the skin with the blade in an attempt to cut it off. He sawed through the skin and got his blade underneath it as blood began to pour out from underneath the skin. 

“Shit!” Alan cursed under his breath, coming out as a hushed whisper, as the blood began to quickly turn the rabbit's white fur a crimson red. 

Alan kept sawing the skin as more and more blood began spilling out of the animal which turned the animal's lower half almost completely red. After some more sawing, he got down to the legs of the animal and found it difficult to cut under the skin of the legs. Alan paused for a moment, thinking about how he could cut it, he decided to just use brute force and tear it off even with how inhumane it sounded.

He stabbed his knife into the dirt and grabbed the skin with hand and held the rabbit down with his other hand and began to tug on the skin. He realized quickly it was harder than he thought it would be to pull the skin off, and so for a few seconds he tugged and pulled on the skin as hard as he could and couldn’t seem to get it off.

“Come on..” Alan whispered, his arm getting tired from the constant tugging and pulling off the skin. After some more struggling to rip off the skin, he opted to pull the bloody skin up and cut it off with the knife. He pulled the knife out of the dirt and did exactly that, cutting the bottom half of the skin all the way through. 

He sighed out of relief after he did this, holding the bloody skin up in front of his face and felt a bit guilty at what he had done but he brushed it off. He tossed the skin to the side and looked inside the animal, gagging at the sight of the bright red muscle underneath the skin.

He had no idea the anatomy of the rabbit, where the liver was or the heart or anything, so he opted to cut off a piece of the muscle and cook it. He began cutting into the muscle which was a lot harder than cutting the skin.

After sawing it for a few seconds and getting no progress, he pushed on the blade full force and sawed into the muscle. The knife slipped away from the muscle he was cutting and the knife accidentally sliced Alan’s hand.

He yelped in pain, gripping the rabbit and slamming it on the ground next to him in anger and stabbing the knife deep into the dirt. He grabbed his wrist tightly and looked at his hand, the skin right above his thumbs knuckle had a cut that reached almost to the middle of the top of his hand. 

Alan was shocked at how long the cut was and watched as blood began to quickly come out onto his hand. The cut stung with pain as Alan took off his hoodie and dropped it on the ground and pulled off his white shirt and hastily wrapped it around his hand. He pulled the two ends of the shirt tightly, which caused his cut to sting even more and Alan to clench his teeth with pain. 

“Ah fuck!” Alan whispered, looking at his hand and watched as the white shirt slowly started turning crimson. ‘What the fuck am I gonna do!’ Alan panicked in his head, ‘What if it gets infected! What if I get sick! Dammit I’m so stupid!’ 

He looked down and saw his knife was stabbed deep into the dirt to where only the handle was visible, he grabbed it and tugged until it came out of the earth. He wiped the dirt and blood off on his pants and folded the blade back and clipped it to his waistband. 

He looked down at the bloody rabbit in disgust while his stomach growled and hurt from hunger pains. 

“What the hell am I gonna do now?” He asked himself, running his hand through his black messy hair, looking around at the forest like someone was going to come out of the trees and save him. He knew if he stayed here in this camp and couldn’t even skin a rabbit, he would die, no doubt about it. However he also thought about how if he kept walking maybe he would find a source of water and he could clean his cut, but the thought of walking for miles and using up all of his energy worried him.

He looked at his watch on his wrist and saw that it was 8:46 AM. Alan felt as though had no other choice, so he looked at the rock path that he followed home just minutes before and grabbed his hoodie and bow and arrow and started walking. Hoping that the path would not lead him astray.

10:34 AM. Food. Water. Those were the only two things that Alan could think about as he sat on the ground leaning against a tree, his dirty hoodie resting in his lap. He leaned his head against the tree, his stomach pain and growling has now become more incessant and his throat felt like a desert. 

He had walked a few miles in the two hours he was walking, however the walking had sapped all of the energy Alan had left in his body. On top of that, the fatigue from dehydration was getting worse, the dehydration also causing a headache to form in Alan’s swirling head.

Alan knew that he was gonna die right here against this tree if he didn’t move but, as much as he wanted to move, his body felt like cinder blocks were weighing him down and keeping him stuck to the ground. 

Alan looked up at the sky as the morning sun cast light through the spaces in between the leaves of the trees, smiling at its beauty. As much as he didn’t want to die, as much as he wanted to find Levi and get closure for his friend, he thought that dying right here would be fine with him. Peacefully in a forest surrounded by nature’s calm embrace, right under the morning sun, a great way to die in Alan’s eyes. 

“God…” He croaked, “I thank you for never leaving me…that you never forsake us…” he croaked, each word being a struggle to say. “But you love me…I trust you…and pray this in your name…Amen” Alan closed his eyes as his head rested against the tree, he put his hands one on top of the other in his hoodie and felt his head swirl and spin from dehydration. A few minutes later, sleep overtook the man, as he laid there vulnerable in the forest.

Alan woke up lying on his stomach in the forest. Confused, he stood up and brushed the grass and leaves off himself and looked around, seeing that it was the same exact forest that he was trapped in. He felt better, normal, no dehydration, no hunger pains or anything. He felt like his normal self. Alan looked around again, trying to see why he was in the forest but in such good condition.

He stopped in front of him, standing in front of him was Levi, he looked at the man in surprise and shock. A cool breeze began to form, blowing the flaps of Levi’s shirt in the wind as he approached Alan.

“Brother…” He called out, his voice booming like thunder and echoing throughout the forest. 

“Levi?” Alan called back. 

“You have to escape the forest Alan, it’s not far from where you are” Levi boomed, shaking the trees around them as the breeze began to turn into a strong wind.

“What’s on the other side!” Alan yelled, attempting to be heard over the whistling of the wind around them.

“Salvation” Levi called out, causing a confused expression to form on Alan’s face.

“What do you mean Levi!” He shouted as the wind grew louder and the sounds of the leaves being blown and shaken were growing louder. 

“You’ll find out brother, trust me. Look for the crystals!” Levi yelled, making his voice louder than it already was. Just like that, he vanished, like he turned into thin air.

Alan woke up with a gasp which felt like he inhaled rocks. The fatigue and pains were still there making themselves known, but a newfound will to live coursed through his veins and filled his heart with determination to survive. As Alan slowly began to stand up, he heard a growl which caused him to go still with surprise.

He looked around him, looking for the source of the growl, he analyzed every inch of the woods around him while fear began to grow inside of him. He heard another growl followed by a twig snapping, his eyes snapped to where the sound was coming from and was horrified by what he saw.

Two green eyes staring at him from behind a tree, his body was covered in the shade and the only part that was visible were his glowing eyes and his eyebrows which were illuminated by their eyes.

The creature locked eyes with Alan and in an instant leaped towards the man with a loud bark. All of Alan’s fatigue was replaced by adrenaline in an instant as he leaped out of the way and skidded on the dirt, watching as the creature slammed into the tree which caused the tree to crack and splinter from the sudden force.

The creature almost immediately recovered from the impact and turned to face Alan, his leaf eyebrows furrowing as his mouth began to water, Alan pushed himself off the ground with his hands and feet and sprinted deeper into the woods. The animal followed closely behind, his paws pounding the ground as he ran, as Alan ran like his life depended on it. Which it very much did. He ran and ran, occasionally hurtling over branches and roots coming out of the ground and rocks that were in his way, all the while the beast trailed behind barking loudly with slobber flying out of his mouth.

Alan’s adrenaline kept him going as he sprinted, hoping to find the “salvation” that Levi was talking about. Eventually, after a few minutes of this nerve wracking chase, Alan foot came into contact with a shiny pink crystal that was embedded in the ground causing him to trip and fall chest first into the ground.

Alan quickly flipped onto his back as the beast leaped into the air and crashed down onto Alan. Alan slammed his feet onto the animal's wooden chest which prevented it from clamping its jaws onto Alan’s neck. He barked at Alan, spraying his saliva on the man's face as he clenched his teeth and tried with all his might to push the animal off of him, but he couldn’t despite his efforts.

Eventually, Alan remembered he had something that could save his life on his waistband, his knife. He reached his hand under his back and looked for the folding knife that was clipped to the back of his pants and eventually found it, gripping its handle and pulling it out. With shaky hands he unfolded the sharp blade which still had some dried blood from the rabbit, and plunged it deep into the animal’s eye. 

The beast roared in agony as it jumped off of Alan, allowing him to reach over and pull the pink crystal out of the dirt and grip it tightly in his hands. The animal recovered from his injury in a few seconds and leaped towards Alan with full intent of tearing him into pieces. Before he could land on him, Alan swung the crystal and smashed into the beast’s face, sending bits and pieces of his wooden head flying. 

The beast was sent to the ground, landing on its side with a thud, lying lifeless on the ground. Alan laid on the ground on his back, panting from the fight and as the adrenaline wore off noticed the soreness in his legs from running. He stood up, dropping the crystal on the ground and walking over to the animal’s body and tearing the knife out of its eye. He saw his knife was covered in fresh green blood but he wiped it off on his pants and folded it back. 

He clipped it to the back of his pants waistband and walked over to his dirty hood and picked it off the ground and put it back on. As he did this he remembered his cut on his hand and looked at the makeshift bandage on his hand and saw that the top of the bandage was crimson red. ‘Wait, the crystal! Follow the crystals!’ Alan suddenly remembered, looking at the ground and saw that ahead of the hole in the ground where the pink crystal used to be was a trail of beautiful multicolored crystals.

He began to follow the trail, hoping that at the end was the salvation that Levi had told him about, sweet sweet salvation.