The pony gasped as she entered the desert, stretching its black sand in front of her and in every other direction, the biting chill of the desert contrasting with the scorching heat of the crags before.
On a whim, she turned around, finding no trace of the crags she’d travelled previously, only more of the cold and black desert. She spun about, looking for a feature, a hill or a valley, something to tell her where the hell she was.
Then she remembered.
This was death, this was the path that every pony took upon dying, the dark desert was watched by the bony spectre whom lets only the dead pass.
She caught herself muttering a half-remembered prayer from long ago. She stilled her tongue and took a step forwards into the black desert. If memory served, the desert was immense, larger than the whole of the Earth and without water or sunlight.
It was the promise of the bony spectre, ‘you will walk the desert, one way or another, but you will walk the desert.’
Rainbow Dash licked her lips with a dry tongue. Somewhere within the dark desert, Twilight was waiting for her, cold and alone in the blackness, just waiting for the bony spectre to claim her.
And he would if Rainbow didn’t find her, she would die, alone and afraid inside the dark desert, and it would be Rainbow’s fault.
She set off; her pace determined and confident as she started her search of the twilight desert.