//------------------------------// // Pain of the Heart // Story: Twilight? // by Lunafan1k //------------------------------// Shining armor was furious; the day had been going on as usual when there was a sudden call to arms. Thinking there was an imminent attack on the city, the entire guard had fallen into formation as the captain and his most trusted subordinates rushed to the war room. They were stopped halfway by another of the guard who directed them to the throne room. They were confused as to why the meeting would be there but nonetheless made their way to their new destination with much haste. “Princess! We’ve assembled as soon as we got word!” Shining slid to a halt, there was nopony on the throne. “Captain Armor.” He turned to his left to see Princess Luna holding a cup of coffee in her magic, her mane a slight mess and her royal garments seemed to be sitting crookedly, as though she was recently woken up. “Princess Luna, we came as soon as we could. What is the nature of the emergency?” He said as he and the other leaders bowed down to receive their orders. “Rise.” She stated, “Shining Armor, I need a word with you in private. Your lieutenants may join the rest of the assembled guard, we…” She trailed off with a yawn, “We will make an announcement once we finish here. Dismissed.” Shining watched his lieutenants leave and then he turned to his Princess, “Did something happen?” He asked in worry. “Come, sit with us.” Luna sighed as she led him into a comfortable sitting room. Once they were situated she handed him a cup of relaxing herbal tea. “You know of Twilight’s latest experiment?” She asked, taking another sip of her coffee “Her latest obsession with runic magic? Yeah I've heard a little about it.” He understated. The past few months all he had heard from her was runic magic this, and how it could do that and this and all sorts of upper level magic mumbo jumbo that went right over his head. Luna shared a smile before it dropped into a frown. “Today was the beginning of the initial tests. From what little I know, everything was going perfectly, then Twilight teleported herself.” She looked away from Shining’s angered scowl, though she couldn’t blame him. Teleporting somepony this soon in testing was an insane idea. “When she made it here she had accidently altered one of the runes, and was teleported to an unknown destination. We have a team of mages deciphering the altered rune as we speak so as to see how far she has traveled, but I will tell you this: the probability she is even still on this planet is lower than the lowest probability you can imagine. So instead of searching fruitlessly around the grounds, I want you to return home for the day. I know you want to look for her, but I assure you that effort would be better spent with your family.” She was right, as much as he wanted to go out and look for her, he should be home comforting his parents and Cadence. No doubt they each felt the same as he did. He nodded once to the princess as he stood, and then made his way out of the castle. He traversed the familiar paths toward his home, lost in thought along the way. Soon enough he arrived at a familiar house, an odd sense of nostalgia overcame him as he walked the old stone path. He raised his hoof to knock on the door when he suddenly heard glass shattering. His protective instincts went into overdrive as he threw the door open and rushed inside. He soon slid to a halt, his parents were clutching each other and weeping, a broken cup of tea lay in the middle of a puddle. Across from them sat Princess Celestia herself, a sad look on her face. She looked to Shining and nodded. He nodded back and moved to join his parents as she stood to leave. They stayed like that for a while, comforting each other as best they could. Suddenly Night Light, his father, burst out laughing. “What? Why are you laughing?! This is serious!” Twilight Velvet yelled hysterically. She wanted to hurt her husband so bad sometimes. “I just came to a realization, I bet wherever Twilight is, I bet she’s having the time of her life. All the new things she’s learning, she probably forgot all about us.” He said with a confident smirk. “Now come on, let’s be happy for our little girl’s new adventure!” As enthusiastic as she was to join Steve on an adventure, the excitement quickly died down and morphed into pure boredom. She got the hang of mining fairly quickly, chip away at the stone with the pickaxe three times, watch it pop out of place, and hit the one below it, rinse and repeat. Every few meters she would pause to turn around and maneuver the little stones into her bags before turning forward once again. Steve had wandered off to Celestia knows where. No, that’s not right. If Celestia knew where he had gone, she definitely knew where Twilight was, and then Twilight wouldn’t be stuck here in her tiny tunnel breathing the stale air. Speaking of air, shouldn’t she make an air vent of some kind? She looked up at the stone above her, but how was she going to reach that high? A moment later the narrow cave echoed with the sound of hoof meeting face. She sat down and lifted the pickaxe above her head in her magic and began hacking away at the stone above, quickly burrowing higher to the surface. She reached the surface faster than she thought she would, the bright light from the sun shining its way toward her. She smiled now that her task was done. She maneuvered the pickaxe back to her side and continued on her forward path. As the progressed, instead of everything getting gradually darker the cave seemed to grow steadily brighter, and if the sweat forming on her body was any indication, it was quickly becoming much warmer too. Curious, she looked behind herself. The shaft she had dug was glowing brightly. Her curiosity quickly turned to fear as the heat radiated into her tunnel. Lava slowly spilled down in front of her and she began to panic. She spun back toward the end of the tunnel and hacked at the stone as fast as she could, slowly moving forward away from the lava. In her panic, she failed to notice the ground open up beneath her and she fell several meters to the stone below. She cried out as she landed painfully, thankfully nothing had broken in the short fall. The glow above her, however, followed her through the hole in pursuit. She staggered to her hooves and hobbled backwards, the pain forced her mind to focus and the more open space helped to calm her nerves, if just a little. The lava slowly fell through the hole and pooled in squares on the ground, spreading several meters in each direction before stopping at her hooves. The glow lit the cave she found herself in, revealing two directions that disappeared into darkness. Twilight sighed as she sat down to rest. She grabbed a glass bottle of water and downed it with several sips, quenching her thirst and restoring some of her energy. “Well this sucks.” She stated. She had no idea what she was doing, Steve showed her how to mine then left her to her own devices, probably to dig his own tunnel. Unfortunately she had no idea how she was going to get back up with all the lava in the way. With no other option seemingly available to her, she chose to travel down the path leading to her right. She placed a torch down at the edge of the darkness and kept moving forward. Her horn’s magical light lit the path ahead well enough, and the train of torches behind her marked her progress. She tried to place each torch an equal distance apart as she had done in her tunnel, but the curves and uneven surface made that difficult. Now and then she would come across strangely colored stone, it was like the other blocks but sometimes they had black spots on them, and a few looked like they were being covered in brown mold. Not knowing what they were, she hesitatly picked at them with her pickaxe. The black splotched stone in front of her took a few more hits from her pickaxe than the other stone, but instead of popping out of the wall it broke into several small black chunks of equal size and shape. She picked one up and examined it. "This... This is coal!" She said in excitement. She looked up around the cave with a smile, more blocks containing coal seemed to line the tunnel. With a happy giggle she went to work collecting every piece. Once she finished, she had a sizable thirty pieces of coal stacked neatly in her bag. She nodded, content that was the last of the coal, and then continued further into the tunnel. She was about to place another torch when something seemed to leap at her from the side. She turned to face the assailant only to scream in fear. It was a bat! She hated bats! Not as much as she hated snakes or spiders but they were scary little devils. She screamed again as she ran blindly into the darkness. A moment later she crashed headfirst into something soft and gooey, her horn piercing into it. She staggered back to her hooves and cleared her head with a firm shake. She lit her horn to see what she had accidentally smashed into and quickly wished she was back with the bat. The zombie moaned as it slowly stood back up, a hole leaking black blood was punctured into its chest. Twilight was frozen with terror, but then she felt the blood on her horn drip onto her muzzle. She lost any semblance of reason as she randomly struck out with her magic, imbedding her pickaxe in the side of its head, breaking the handle in the process. The zombie stopped moving and fell in a heap at her hooves, her pickaxe disintegrating into nothing and leaving a gaping hole in its head. She stood over the body, her legs twitching frantically from the adrenaline pumping through her veins as she backed away. She was scared, she didn’t mean to kill it but it was obviously violent, but then again it’s not fast and she could have just run away. It made her sick. The smell of the zombie’s insides clung to her forehead; the body not ten paces from her smelled much the same, that that wasn’t what made her ill. She had killed something out of a reflex. Sure this time it was a monster, but what if it had been Steve? Or what if it was another living, thinking creature like the villagers, or one of the helpless cows? She would have killed them, and that would have made her a murderer, unworthy of being the Princesses student, unworthy of her friends, unworthy of Equestria. A shiver traveled down her spine as the taste of bile rose in her throat. She leaned down and retched, the sound of wet splashing chunks of half-digested bread echoed off the walls, the sound and smell causing her to heave even more so. Soon she was empty, her body going through the motions but nothing more spilled to the ground. She spit out the remaining amount clinging to her teeth and wiped her mouth clean. She staggered back to the wall and lay against it, tears matting the fur around her eyes. She didn’t want to do this anymore, she was done. Her hopes of a fun adventure had died with the zombie. “I just want to go home…” She whimpered. Thoughts of her home, her family and friends pained her heart as she broke down.