It was dark.
Ultimately, with no form of light, her wing injured and her chest and throat burning from all of the shouting, Rainbow Dash was lost, miserable and alone. She had wandered around the cave for an immeasurable amount of time, without Celestia’s Sun or Luna’s Moon to give her any indication of how long she’d been down there.
Something cold hit her muzzle, shocking her slightly. A grin broke out as she realised that a steady dripping of water was dropping from the ceiling. Facing up, and mouth wide open, she sighed as the water hit the back of her throat, cooling the spots that it touched. After some time, her throat stopped burning and her mouth wasn’t as dry, and she felt a lot better, she set off again.
Finding a pillar of stone, she dropped to her haunches and rested her head back on it, going over the events that had put her in this situation…
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“Get them!” Rainbow yelled to Twilight as she saw two of the mutts. Both charged, but they dropped out of sight and Rainbow and Twilight crashed into each other.
Rarity had been kidnapped by a gang named the Diamond Dogs because of her talent of finding gemstones. Without many leads, the rest of her friends have resorted to playing some sort of scaled up version of Whack-A-Parasprite to get down into their lair.
Rainbow disentangled herself from the purple unicorn and looked around and saw her other friends didn’t seem to be having much luck either: Pinkie had been thrown into a pile of dirt; Applejack was stretching over trying to catch one that was weaving around her and; Spike and Fluttershy had been tripped up.
Turning around, she saw another dog and charged over, only to find herself face first in the dirt. Turning around, she saw a hairy grey leg pull back into the dirt. Grumbling and out of breath, she pulled herself into the air.
“…poor Rarity must be terrified” she caught Fluttershy say, leading to her imagination treating her to a scenario where the Diamond Dogs were jumping out and demanding to know where the treasure was.
A shout from Spike brought her out of her reverie, and she caught the dragon running over to a hole that had yet been filled in. Tying a gem to a fishing rod and lowering into the hole, Twilight trotted over and said “Spike, it is very noble of you…”, only to be cut off. She started to whisper, and the rest of the conversation was lost to her.
Stifling a giggle as she saw Spike try to kiss Applejack a few minutes later, she suddenly snapped out of it when Spike got dragged into the hole. Applejack bit onto his tail, and Twilight onto Applejacks’. Dashing over, she caught onto Twilight tail as they got pulled into the hole.
A few twists and turns later, as well as a spectacular leap across a chasm, all six of them ended up on the floor in a pile. Spike jumped up in triumph, only to let out a drawn out “NOOOOOO!” as he looked around and saw all of the tunnels.
Looking down all the tunnels, Twilight let out a sigh.
“Guess we’ll have to split up.”
Waving a hoof to her friends, Rainbow Dash set out down her tunnel. Further down, the ground give way beneath her feet, causing her to tumble. Her wing shot out, crashing into stone, and causing her to plummet to the ground, losing consciousness until a bit later on.
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Rainbow drifted awake when her stomach started rumbling and a pang of hunger hit her. Her chest had eased a bit, so she started a series of shouts for her friends, her calls echoing through the cavern.
“TWILIGHT!”
“APPLEJACK!”
“PIN…”
Scrape.
Rainbow sat to attention, her ears straining to make out the noise. She could have sworn she just hea….
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
The sweat that poured down Rainbow’s body turned cold as she heard the scraping noise, not unlike metal being scraped along the rocky floor. Swiveling her head, she couldn’t make out anything that wasn’t right in front of her hoof. Testing her wing in case she needed to shoot up, she found it cramped up, not even moving from her side, drawing a grimace of pain when she tried.
Scrape. Scrape.
She couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, the cavernous cave causing it to echo all around. Panic setting in, Rainbow felt around and found two sizable rocks.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
Was it getting closer? Where was it? Behind me?
Panic started to set in as these thoughts flashed through her mind. Her imagination treated her to gory images of her being killed.
Scrape.
Something caught the corner of Rainbow’s vision, and instinctively she threw one of the chunks of rock. A fleshy impact and a dull thud alerted that she’d hit something. She’d taken a step forward when something rested on her shoulder.
“AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!” her scream resounded through the cave. She spun around and was immediately blinded by purple light, causing her to trip over a rock.
“Rainbow?”
She recognised the voice. It was Twilight’s.
“OH THANK CELESTIA!!!” she yelled, promptly jumping and sobbing into Twilight’s mane. Seeing such a reaction from a pony that never really showed fear shook her up a bit.
“What happened?” She asked gently.
“I-I-I got l-lost when th-the ground collapsed. I-it was da-dark *sniff* and I-I couldn’t see a thing. Th-then I heard something c-coming up to m-me, so I th-threw a rock and I th-think I hit it.”
Pushing a bit more magic through her horn, the ambient light from it spread out. What she saw forced a gasp out of her, and she held tight to Rainbow so that she wouldn’t see.
Frail legs, marked with dried blood and untreated wounds, ended with metallic horseshoes on its hooves were attached to an abused body. A heavy harness with chains was forced on the body, attached by some unknown means. Blood pooled around the pale body that obviously hadn’t seen light for years. Yet, despite the creature being in such poor shape, Twilight knew what it was. The reason it was down here must have been because it got lost in the near endless system of tunnels, and Twilight felt a pang of sympathy for the poor creature.
It was (or had been at one point) a pony.