//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8: Compassion Distorted, Part 1 
// Story: Chronicles of an Unknown World - The Awakening 
// by Blue Blaze {COMET} 
//------------------------------//


-CHAPTER 8: COMPASSION DISTORTED-



{*First-Person View, Main Character*}


We were on the road again.

I didn’t know how long we had been walking for, but it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. The whole time, Twilight refused to speak to me. She refused to look at me. Heck, when I asked her where the heck we were going, she didn’t even flinch. To her, it was like I wasn’t even there. However, I can sympathize, because I understand her plight. If I was her, I wouldn’t like me either. Not in the slightest. In fact, right now I hate myself pretty badly, because no matter how you roll the dice, or chop the carrots, or flip the pancakes, it still leads to one, pure and unaltered fact: I screwed up.

I was kidding myself before when I was comforting. Rainbow Dash DID die, and there WAS something I could have done about it. For crying out loud, there was something that I could have done to save all the ponies if I wasn’t crying like a selfish, wimpy bastard at the time. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. I was so freaking stupid! I was not paying attention and I paid for it. Everyone paid for it. So now, we have an even higher death count from the black hole than before Twilight and I entered the damn building! Fan-freaking-tastic. I bet the remaining population of Ponyville was taking shelter in that building. And I let it get destroyed.

And here we were, stepping on the cobblestone streets, houses and buildings around us either wrecked, missing, destroyed, on fire or a combination of the above.  The wind whipped around us once again, trying to sweep us off our feet and into the black abyss above. It howled in my ears, and I could barely hear our foot and hoofsteps on the solid pavement. The sky was the same as it was for the past several hours: dark, intimidating and full of storm clouds. Actually, now that I think about it, it was actually a bit darker than it had been except for the times when lightning jumped from one cloud to the next. The black hole sat in location atop the world, swirling and churning in a malevolent mess of destruction. Old brass streetlights, the ones that you would see in London, were surrounding us at the edges of the pavement. They stood tall and occurred in pairs of two every few meters or so. It reminded me once more how horribly out of place objects of electricity was in this universe filled with hay, magic and talking ponies.

I was cold. So cold, and getting colder by the minute. My hands wrapped themselves around my arms and rubbed them, trying to create heat from the friction. It wasn’t helping much, but the fact that there was something actively covering my arms from the wind created a little breathing room in the tornado-like weather. The tips of my earlobes were freezing to the touch, and every time I felt them with my fingernails an odd sensation would run along the edge of my fingertips. I was also tired. Cold and tired and sore from all the bumps and bruises that I gotten from running away from the storm. I wanted to just curl up into a nice soft mattress underneath several layers of covers and blankets and take a nice long snooze. I wanted to get out of the chilly temperature and the foreboding atmosphere and the mark of death above us and escape to happier times. To go back into the world that I once knew as Earth and see all the familiar marks of cars, phones and humans all over again. I wanted to go home.

But who the hell didn’t? I knew Twilight was suffering as much as I was, if not more, but it was hard to cope with it all. The average brain was not meant to handle the apocalypse, think about past moral choices and plan what to do next all at the same time. It was wearing me down and proved to be more than a match for what my mental capability could handle. My eyelids felt heavy under the cold lavender light that Twilight’s horn was emitting, but I kept as alert and aware as I could be at the moment. She was barely ahead of my by a hair and I found it easy to keep up with her pace. I could tell that her walking was laboured by the way her hooves dragged on the ground on occasion and how she couldn’t keep her head up one-hundred percent on the time. The fact that she had to keep casting the artificial gravity spell over and over throughout these past two day and that she hasn’t eaten anything for a long time didn’t help either. Between getting knocked out and awaking to find that your cyan friend was left in the dust, she hasn’t had a chance to get something in her stomach. Her last meal was at Rarity’s, and that was about eight hours previous in the morning. We need to get to the next safe house and/or destination before Twilight collapses from hunger!

As the adjacent streets passed us by, Ponyville was starting took look the same to me no matter where we went: dying, dead and desolate. But as we approached the edges of town, a small orange glow appeared not too far off in the distance. It shined through the darkness, cutting through the air and filling it with a strange sense of warmth. The pulse it gave of was enough to make me slightly smile. It looked to be some kind of magical spell that gave off so much energy that it created such bright light to combat the unknown. It could have been a rescue team, or a group of unicorns, waiting to pick up Ponyvillians and drop them off somewhere save. Maybe it was the familiarity of seeing light in the darkness or the comforting hue it gave of, but whatever the reason was it, I found a small amount of hope within myself. I had a feeling that despite all the chaos and danger we would get out of the storm fine, get Twilight’s friends and get out of the danger zone. Awe-inspired, I kept following Twilight towards what looked like to be our salvation. 

When we got closer however, my predictions were shot down. Hard. In front of us was in actuality a firestorm of massive proportions. A blazing inferno reached across the skyline and continued to chew down on what used to be multiple houses and other wooden buildings in the distance. It reached an extensive width and the flames seemed to dance, leaping from building to building in destructive glee. Even being the several hundred meters away we were, I felt as if I could feel the sparks of the fire melt my skin already.

“Uhh, Twilight?” I began to ask, shuffling closer to her ears. “Where are we headed?” I know I already asked that a while ago, but that was, as I said, a while ago, and I was hoping that she would actually tell me now that there’s something that may have caught her attention.

“To Fluttershy’s house, which is outside of Ponyville.” she simply answered. I waited a heartbeat for her to follow through with an explanation, but none was given.

“But, uh, shouldn’t we go around the big flaming ball of inferno that sits right in front of us?” I inquire.

She gave a patient yet calculating sigh. “We can’t. The longer we take to get to Fluttershy’s house, the high the chance that she won’t be there anymore when we get there. Plus, I can’t keep this spell up for much longer. We need to get to safety as fast as possible.”

I nervously gazed at our upcoming challenge. Her logic was severely lacking. If we needed to get to safety, I didn’t think that prancing through a firestorm would help us any. In addition, she forgot, (perhaps purposely) to mention that Fluttershy’s house might not even BE there by the time we get there. It could have flown out and away like all the other establishments had. We were taking a huge gamble sticking our heads into a boiling pot like this.

“Is there any other way we could get to house safely?” I queried.

She looked at the ground, closing her eyes for a second and stopped. Like I said before, she looked tired. Real tired. And hungry, and thirsty, and beaten up. My questions were not helping the situation, and it probably hurt her brain to process a coherent answer due to having to balance her mental satiability with the spell she was casting and staying in the conversation all at the same time. It was hurting her to go through this. But she was insane if she thought that going through that death sentence was a good idea. I had to try and talk some sense into her.

“No, there really isn’t.” Twilight said in a big puff of exhaled air. She lifted up her head and started walking again. I hung back a few feet. Think Griffin, think! What would make Twilight reconsider?

“Why don’t we go find Applejack first?” I suggested. 

Bad idea. She turned her head and gave me such a dirty glare that it could have made the bravest of men run away squealing. “Applejack’s house is at the East end of Ponyville. Fluttershy’s is only a kilometer or two away. I don’t think that I could hold the gravity spell long enough to get to Applejacks. Besides, We’re close enough to Fluttershy’s, and I need to check if she’s safe.”

Her pace increased, and her eyes went back to the road ahead of her. I could see her jaw chew the inside of her cheek in annoyance and frustration, a clear hint that she wanted me to stop trying to persuade her into going with her plan. I was getting worried. She was absolutely crazy! We were walking into a living, breathing firestorm and she wanted to march on through like it was nothing more than a park or something. The heat of the flames was right there and she didn’t even bat an eyelid. Either she’s really loyal and determined to get to Fluttershy or she’s too tired to mentally recognize the dangers that this could cause. Never the less, we continued onwards. I say ‘we’ even though really I had no choice in the matter. It was either move along or get left behind and let the gravity spell deactivate. Or maybe she would pull me along with her freaky telekinesis like she did in the library. But that would use up the rest of her magic… Whatever. Point is, I had to keep moving on.

The transition from ruined buildings to burning buildings was actually a quite interesting one. From a distance, the light from the blaze actually reflected off of the storm clouds, creating the illusion that there was a big, fluffy, and dark ceiling over the entire town. However, when we got close enough, the brightness killed our sense of light depth and the sky disappeared altogether, including the black hole. There was a clear parameter to where the fire was reaching and where it was extending to. First there were houses that weren’t on fire, then there were houses that were slightly on fire and then there were houses that were drenched in the inferno. Planks and pieces of wood from the buildings were falling apart from getting devoured, slowly crippling the structure the material was supposed to support. Sparks and cinders flew up in the air, creating a would-be magnificent light show if there wasn’t the fact that if they touched us they would burn our skin or light us on fire. We both tried to keep away from the flames, but you can’t do much when fire is on both sides of the street. We only had four or five meters of elbow room, so we traveled in a single-file line through the center of the road, keeping to ourselves and trying to maintain a steady speed.

After a few minutes on inferno avenue, I was beginning to get hot. The temperature grew up to steaming and I found that my previously freezing arms were now starting to cook under a light temperature of 200 degrees. Ok, that’s stretching it a bit, but I couldn’t deny that it was heated under all the fire around us. The light slowly became so intense that I had to squint and give my eyes a second or two to adjust. All the smoke that came from the houses rose up into the atmosphere, but it didn’t stop the nearby environment from being very stuffy. A few minutes later, the fire was rising up to the horizon and it was getting almost impossible to move without having to urge to sprint back. It was like putting my feet near a campfire- it felt good and warmed you up, but you couldn’t do it for long unless you wanted some smoked toes for dinner. So take that feeling, and apply it to all around your body constantly and robbing you the ability to take away your feet from the fire. That’s what it felt like. I was supposed to be sweating all over, but I think that the hot air kept making the moisture on my skin evaporate almost instantly, preventing from any kind of cooling down. My mouth was getting pretty dry too and I could taste the dehydration settling in. What was worse was that the wind from the storm was not sprinkling any kind of relief on us, but instead making the problem even worse. It would mix and churn the heat in the air and then set it all flying towards us at full tilt, making it feel like I was getting bombarded by a furnace on full blast.

And then, it all stopped. The heat dimmed down to a temperature close to a coziness that you find under blankets. I wasn’t cooking anymore, but instead pleasantly enjoying the simulation of being in a soft, comforting mattress. The glaring light around us diminished too, lowering down to a volume where I could actually make out the small details of the houses that the flames were snuffing out and burning to the ground. That’s when I also noticed that my vision had gained a slight tint of thistle and there was a faint but still distinguishable purple aura around the outline of my body. My eyebrows rose as I took a look at Twilight’s horn. It was glowing a bit brighter, and her face was a bit more strained and etched with struggle.

I knew what was going on, but before I could say anything I suddenly heard a loud pop behind me, followed by the sound of pieces of glass hitting the ground. Both of us turned around to see that several feet down the road one of the streetlamps had its glass explode from withstanding too much heat from the environment around it. The surrounding area was covered in a sheet of tiny but deadly shards of glass embedding itself in the nearest surface. It appeared that electricity tried to jump out of the source of illumination too, but only got as far as the glass flied, which was actually pretty darn far. Not five seconds after, the light right across the street from it suffered a similar fate, where it exploded into a million pieces. Then, the next ones from it exploded too. Then the next ones. One by one the lights were being obliterated, creating showers of crystal daggers in the process. I turned my head back towards Twilight. She gazed back at me, an expression of bewilderment and fear on her face. Without having a second thought, I shouted the absolute genius idea that we were both thinking at the time.

“Run!”

And we kicked off from the starting line. Twilight had a head start because she was in front of me in the first place and her body was more tuned to traveling fast in a pinch. That didn’t mean I didn’t have my own speed. I was easily taller than her by two feet, meaning that my legs were even taller than hers. The long strides that I took without a doubt matched the double horsepower that she had over me. Still it wasn’t a race, and the fact that I could keep up to her sprint actually worried me. If she was a real horse and she put the pedal to the metal, she should have gain a good five to ten meters off of me. But I could tell that her overall motor movements were sluggish and she had been slower to react to the popping lamps that I had. Her magic, hunger and overall exhaustion was killing her speed. That wasn’t a good thing.

So we ran. Not even three seconds after we dipped and already I could hear the glass breaking right behind my back. The rate of pops was steadily increasing, and I could actually make out a slight sizzling sound after each one. I began to put on even more speed, and I assumed Twilight could hear the danger too because she slightly sped up as well. The houses around us became a blob of orange that melted together into some kind of glowing mess. At the road was slightly curving, We had to tilt our weight to keep in the center. Or at least I did. I’m not sure if Twilight had to. Never the less, the shards were hot on my heels and I was worried about getting impaled by several thousand tiny needles of pain. As we passed an intersection, I looked to my right to see if we could escape the explosions down the street. Apparently fate had it on us, because the streetlamps were also blowing up at the same time as the ones behind us. Come to think of it, the street lamps ahead of us were fine until the ones behind us began the downhill snowball. So why did it all start at once, all at the same time?

I began to overheat, and I think I know why. Besides the obvious fact that I was running full speed down an alley full of fire, the glow around my body started to dissipate and fade a little. Twilight’s horn also stopped glowing as intensely. I figure that she either had to put powering into her magic or power into her legs, but she couldn’t do both. Not while running on empty. My lungs started to cook as the stuffiness of the air got to me. Just as my track time couldn’t get any worse, to my horror I stared at a large cloud of smoke in front of us. I tried to brace myself and close my eyes while holding my breath, but it only lasted for a second or two, as my screaming lungs wouldn’t have any of it. My brain forcibly took a breath for me and I tasted all the ash and soot lingering within the oxygen. My reaction was immediate. I started coughing and hacking up a storm, with Twilight joining me. My eyes watered and stun in pain because I forgot not to open them while running through smoke. All of the sudden I lost all power in my muscles, and my limbs shut down. I found it almost impossible to give them any kind of willpower, so I stumbled on my feet while I tried to keep my balance under the momentum until I finally flopped over. I tried to suck in more air and to my surprise I actually could since the smoke lingered above me but not on ground level. After a few deep gulps of almost fresh air I began crawling army-style underneath the darkened mist. Twilight was nowhere to be seen and I didn’t trip on her, so she must have gotten out of the smoke safely or at least cleared it without collapsing in the middle like I had.

It didn’t take me more than a few seconds before I cleared it. The air above me was suddenly smoke-less and had the normal hot air that it had before. Now that had me confused. First, why was there a wall of pure, black smoke in the middle of nowhere, especially since smoke rises and that there was no fire on the road? Second, how did physics allow it to abruptly start and stop at the same time? It was like some kind of rectangle shape that just stretched across the length of the road, completely ignoring any kind of logic that has to do with gases! It made no sense. Maybe it was another act of magic? But was it truly random? Did someone else cast it? Did someone who we didn’t see who is following us cast it in an attempt to slow us down enough for the glass to impale us? Did the same person also start the chain of explosions with some other magical curse? Unfortunately for the thinking part of my mind, I had to put those thoughts away because the popping noises that were absent during the smoke sequence were now rapidly catching up to us. I quickly got to my feet and took one step just to find that I stepped on Twilight’s tail.

She was lying on the ground right in front of me, not moving. Her eyes were closed, and I feared the worst. Sure she was still breathing, but the smoke must have knocked her out even after she cleared all of it. I felt lucky that I didn’t share the same fate, because then we would be truly screwed over. I immediately knelt down beside her and started tapping her sides, shaking her and screaming in her ear “GET UP GET UP GET UP!” The tiny explosions were getting closer. I looked to the cloud of smoke, realizing that we only had mere seconds left if Twilight didn’t get a move on. It was time for desperate measures. I lifted up her head with one hand and slapped her right across the face with the other. That got her to it, and she woke up in a groggy state, oblivious to what was going on. I had read on the internet that when you wake up after fainting you don’t remember what caused you to faint or what happened before fainting. It didn’t take her long to get a clue after seeing the large columns of fire around us and hearing me yelling right in her vicinity. With a forced hurry she got to her hooves again and dashed off with me following right behind.

The pops were as close as ever. I could almost feel the force they exerted when they went ‘kaboom!’ and didn’t dare look back just in case so I wouldn’t get a stray piece of glass to the eye. My adrenaline was acting as my main fuel source now. I’m not a good runner at all, and I have trouble keeping up with one-hundred meter sprints, so going full tilt down several blocks of streets was taking its toll on me. I was also beginning to feel a bit funny from all the hot air around us. It’s hard to explain. I was having chills, with Goosebumps sticking out of my skin and my muscles shivering even though I knew and I felt like it was one-thousand degrees out. My body felt many times more tired from it, and I was aware that my fight-or-flight mode was doing all the work for me. I was worried that I would get beaten by my own stamina instead of flying daggers of doom.

If anything, Twilight was worse off than I was. At least I was still going. I hadn’t felt the pain that the overheating and exertion would soon cause, but she was already experiencing it. We were going at almost half the speed we were when we began running, and she was almost tripping on her own hooves. She head was down almost the entire time. Yet, despite all this she still managed to keep her gravity spell going. At this point, I wonder if it was actually still worth it to still have it on. I mean, if she de-activated it then we would go flying upwards, right out of the explosions and the firestorm. We would be out of the danger. But then again, there was the matter of getting back down to the ground without getting squashed from Twilight’s homemade gravity. Maybe she could ease us down, but that also doesn’t help the fact that we have no way to steer our decent. We could go up and end up right back down where we started, and that wouldn’t help one bit.

As we curved slightly to the left, I spotted ahead of me that the road had ended with two large building that had collapsed onto the track. There was no way getting over the fifteen feet of flames it was giving off, so I made a split decision and pulled Twilight to our left where there was an open street waiting for us. Suddenly there was an ear-shattering boom and I felt a sharp pain on my left side, right underneath the rib cage. I hissed and felt the wound sting and dig into my skin, a warm sensation pouring over the area. I grabbed it with my right hand while sprinting and when I pulled it back there was blood all over my fingertips. I took a brief glance down at my shirt and saw the white fabric quickly turning crimson. Little nibbles of pain reached across the left side of my torso, reaching tiny peaks of annoyance every time my heart beat and blood came coursing over the cut.

After stumbling on my feet for a second I regained my balance and doubled my pace, regardless of twilight’s speed. I started to run right beside her, and I saw her take a glance at me before her gaze went back to the ground. She was putting all her effort into running and applying the spell constantly, so I had to be her eyes, ears, nose and brain. Every move I made agitated my wound, and I knew that my adrenaline was making it feel much more mild then it actually was. I was taking quick sips of oxygen, trying to steady my breathing as the stress of an open injury hit my psyche full force. I felt tears reach my eyes then race down my cheeks, blurring the bottom of my vision. 

And that’s when it got worse. I was wincing when I barely saw the wall of debris blocking our path once again. I managed to stop by simply throwing my feet forward and dropping to my buttocks while hauling in Twilight’s torso with my right arm. She yelped and we halted a few feet away from the blaze. I could feel my sneakers melting, so I edged away as quickly as possible while dragging the unicorn with me. Then it occurred to me that the explosions had stopped by then. I took a hurried gander at our surrounding to find that there were no lamps of any sort anywhere in the nearby vicinity. I gave a great sigh of relief, knowing that we wouldn’t have to keep running from danger. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep going anyways. My heart felt like it was ready to jump straight out of my chest it was beating so hard!

Not a moment later and I heard a loud crash behind me, followed by the sounds of planks of wood mashing and collapsing on each other. It was startling, and my ears started to ring after the fact. I turned around, and found that the path behind us was no longer accessible. Now, it was covered with several layers of building materials as a deadly blazing inferno that blocked any kind of means getting out of this hellhole. I had to process my thoughts for a moment to realize that we were now stuck inside a burning ring of fire. 

I looked back at Twilight. She stared ahead of us at the wall of pain, and seemed to have the kind of fear that would be found in young children scared out of their mind. A second later she turned her head towards the ground, closed her eyes and weakly stomped at the ground.

“Ah! No no no no! We were so close! We were so close…” she yelled, her voice directed at the earth beneath her. Her gaze went up at the sky, and the dark circles under her eyelids were highlighted in the fire’s light. I looked up too, wondering what got her attention. There was nothing there except for the thin white outline of the black hole above us. I took a second to connect the dots and realize that that’s what she was looking at. The demeanour she gave off suggested that she was cursing inwardly on how the tiny ball screwed us over.

I laid down on my side and let my head sag onto the ground. It was hard to control my breathing to a slower level. The rush of danger was flushing through my system and giving me the power to conquer anything, even though we wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. There was no way go get out of our mess. We couldn’t wait for the fire to die down, because that could take days, and Twilight only had a few minutes at best. Like I pondered before, we couldn’t go up into the air because it would take too much effort to aim our direction. We certainly couldn’t go through. We had no water, nor the unicorn power to make some kind of drill. It was just Twilight and I, two in one, alone in the depths of this hellish deathtrap.

I felt something press into my calf. Lifting up my head, I twisted my shoulders to see Twilight putting her hoof on me with an expression of extreme concentration while her horn glowed like nothing before. The lavender light that shined all around steadily grew in intensity, making my eyes squint and water. A small whirlwind started to swing around the purple magician and had our hair flail in all directions. A steady, high-pitched whistle came from her energy and became louder the longer she charged whatever she was charging. She lowered her head, grit her teeth together and yelped.

There was a sudden flash of light. My eyes were filled with white, the background a blank slate of nothingness. Just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished, leaving me staring at a flat patch of grass four feet above the air. Before I could get my bearings, I landed on my stomach with a *whump*. Abrupt pain erupted from my abdomen, and I caused my back even more suffering when I tried to curl myself and use my arms to feel the front of my torso. For the time being I laid face down in silence, clenching my jaw and hissing through the torment of it all. It took me a little bit for my brain to pass the injury as a minor discomfort and I managed to lift up my head and take a look at our surroundings.

There were trees everywhere, looking down in the darkness. It cast shadows blacker than the night itself, and created a sense of unease in my chest. After looking at pure light for the past half an hour, my eyes were not prepared to focus onto such a drastic contrast of brightness in the setting. A faint orange glow hovered onto the trees leaves, projecting itself from somewhere behind me. When I turned around I noticed the snap, crackle and pop of a massive fire in the vicinity. A good hundred feet away was the perimeter of the firestorm, still lit high and mighty. In between it and us were the backyards of what were once the homes of this place, followed by a deep ditch that extended along the backyards and appeared to contain a small amount of water. The rest of the distance was filled with plain, flat grass. Twilight somehow teleported us out of the danger zone and into some relative safety!

Speaking of Twilight, I heard quiet sobbing somewhere in front of me. I turned my attention again and spotted Twilight lying on her side a few feet away from me.

“Twilight!” I cried out in surprise. I got up as swiftly as I could, ignored the pain from my everywhere and kneeled down beside her. She was crying quietly to herself under the veil that the trees provided. Her eyes were closed and she didn’t bother to lift her head up. Her horn barely emitted any light at all.

“Twilight, what’s wrong?” I asked, putting one hand on her side. She barely opened up one eye before managing the energy to speak to me.

“I… I can’t…” She paused, taking a breath before closing her eyes again. Then I realized she wasn’t just closing her eyes. She was wincing in pain. “I can’t feel my legs. Oh Celestia! Griffin, I can’t feel my legs!”

I panicked. My hands ran down her strong horse legs, while I searched for any kind of cut, wound or broken bone that could have been sticking out slightly. I lifted up her hooves a little so I could get some leverage while checking. After half a minute, I determined that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong. I pressed lightly on one of her back legs. It was warm, and I could feel her heart’s strong pulse through it. Twilight didn’t seem to mind about the process.

“I can’t find anything wrong.” I reported. “You just can’t flat out feel them?”

She sniffed, nodding weakly and biting her lip.

“Are you in pain?”

She nodded again.

“Where?”

“My head.” she replied. “My head hurts.”

“Well how bad is it?” I asked, placing my hand on her forehead and checking for a temperature.

“It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts!” she wailed. Her face was wet with tears and I could hear her nose clog up when she spoke.

“Can you get up?”

She tried to turn her head, but the ground stopped her. Instead she dragged her muzzle across the dirt back and forth. “N-no.”

I looked up. Right in front of us, right in the darkness seemed to be the beginnings of what looked like to be a forest. It was ominous and foreboding, like it wanted me to come in just to rip my innards out. All the trees were either Oaks, Elms or some of kind of Carnivorous plant. I couldn’t see the horizon from here, and instead my view was blocked by a thick wall of foliage.

My gaze went back to Twilight’s face. “Do you know where Fluttershy’s house is from here?”

She tilted her head up and opened her eyelids a bit wider, staring into the distance. After a few seconds of consideration, I heard her exhale a held breath and look back at me. “Y-yeah. I think so.”

“Ok.” I answer. I dragged my knees closer to her. “Now here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to pick you up and carry you while you tell me where Fluttershy’s house is. Does that sound good?”

She mumbled in response, but it sounded like she agreed.

“Ok. I’m going to pick you up now. If I begin to hurt you, you yell and I’ll put you back down safely, ok?”

She nodded. That gave me the go to move even closer and get on one knee, wrapping both arms around her stomach. As I lifted her up, I felt my core tense up and I hesitated, wincing while a stabbing pain sliced into my left side. I was reminded that I had been injured and was not in any situation to go anywhere long distance. In an ideal situation, I would have stopped, took off my shirt and examined my wound, but there was no time. We had to move. Sucking up the stinging sensation, I lowered my base and thrust my hips forward, using their momentum to help me get up onto my other foot. From there, I could accurately gauge how well carrying Twilight would go. She wasn't too heavy, in fact I thought of her to be much, much heavier initially, but the blood flowing beneath my ribcage made me worry that too much exertion from my left side would hurt me much more in the long run.

I bit my lip. Realizing there was a better way to carry Twilight, I hefted her up and over my right shoulder, her stomach facing down. She squealed and I adjusted my head so that it wasn't digging into her side. I let my left arm fall and relax, allowing my core muscles to calm down a little two. Getting through our journey will be a lot easier now. From the light that Twilight's horn emitted, I could barely make out the multitudes of trees that were between us and our next destination. I glanced up at Twilight. Her eyes were closed, even though I could still see the stress beneath her eyelids. It was as if she was sleeping. I knew she wanted to rest so badly, and she deserved it. After all of the chaos and mayhem that this one girl had to go through, damn it, she deserved a break! She didn't need all of this! I was going to deliver that rest for her! I'm sure of it. 

With that all said and done, I advanced forward, leaving the fire and approaching the woods.