A Distant Star
Chapter Five: A Wrong Turn
Last Time: "Ah! Twilight my dear! Spike said I could find you here." Rarity said walking up to Twilight slowly, obviously trying to stay as far away from any of the machinery as possible.
"Oh, of course! You needed me to model today didn't you?" Twilight said with a little smile, trying to hide her nervousness. Rarity's eyes lit up "Yes! I thought maybe you'd forgotten. It's such a shame that Fluttershy was busy... she never did say what she was doing... oh well, it can't be helped. Anyway, there's no time to waste, we must be on our way!" She announced as her horn glowed lifting Twilight off her hooves. She galloped towards the door with Twilight hovering just behind her.
"BUT RARRRRIIIITTTTYYYYY!" Twilight cried out as she shot out the out the door. Atom simply chuckled and called out the door "Goodbye Twilight, I'll see you tonight." He said, watching down the corridor until the door at the far end closed. His smile quickly dropped and he sighed, and sat down. Wondering, and dreading, if he would be getting any more less than desirable 'Visitors' today...
Twilight dragged her hooves back to her house. After her recent ‘irregular’ sleeping pattern, The fashion show (Which had somehow gone completely smooth), and her mad gallop into the forest in the morning, she was out of energy. She was almost at her door when Pinkie bounced in out of nowhere.
“HI TWILIGHT!” Pinkie Pie sang, energetic as always. Twilight wondered where all of her energy came from, and why it was so contagious. She perked up a bit and grinned
“Hi there Pinkie, what brings you to the library?” Pinkie sucked in a gasp of air before very (very) quickly responding: “Well I haven’t seen you in a while and I was just baking some cupcakes and thought ‘I wonder how Twilight is and then I realized I hadn’t seen you in soooooo long, so I came over to see how you were! Sooooo…. How are you?” She asked in her musical voice.
Twilight giggled a bit at Pinkies usual hyperactivity.
“Well I am pretty good. Tired though, I just did a fashion show for Rarity. It doesn’t help that I spent the whole night at my new friend's house.” she said, blushing, but jumped a bit as Pinkie gasped loudly.
“YOU HAVE A NEW FRIEND!? Do I know them? Do I? Do I? Do I? Are they new!? Oh no! If they are new they won’t have met anypony yet! I need to throw them a party!!!!!” She chimed in excitement, bounding around in every direction. She had been talking so quickly that Twilight hadn’t been able to get a single word in, and still wasn’t able to as Pinkie resumed her high speed rambling about the party.
Finally after 5 minutes Twilight finally saw an opening and took it.
“PINKIE! He isn’t new! He’s been here longer than I have!” she shouted to make sure she cut off whatever Pinkie Pie was about to go into. Pinkie Pie looked around at her quickly.
“It’s a HE!? Oooooh! So you finally got yourself a coltfriend! What's he like!? What’s his name!?” Twilight blushed deeply at the use of the word 'coltfriend.'
“Piiinkie! He isn’t my Coltfriend! We only just met! And his name is Dr Atom Discharge. He’s the unicorn living up in th- Pinkie?”
Pinkie Pie had frozen at the name. It was the most still Twilight had ever seen her.
“Er… Pinkie?” Twilight asked, rather confused. Pinkie suddenly flopped to the floor, looking very depressed.
“He… he never came to the party I threw for him…” she said in a sad, flat tone, as if on the verge of tears. Twilight knew she had to do something the cheer the party pony up.
“Oh, Pinkie, I’m sorry, he is nervous around new ponies. I’m sure if you threw a party I could get him to come, I’ll tell him to come in a day or two, or ma-“
“A DAY OR TWO!? We’ll have it TONIGHT! Give me three hours!” Pinkie exclaimed, bouncing into the air with glee, startling Twilight. She sheepishly tried to push the date.
“But.. what if he is busy… or he doesn’t want to go out tonight … or-“ Pinkie cut her of once again.
“Oh silly, he’ll listen to you, you are his friend.” She said happily, and just as Twilight is about to speak again Pinkie chirped up… again… “Ok, well I have to get a party ready, bye Twilight!” She dashed off, leaving Twilight to stand there with her mouth still half open.
Twilight sighed and set off towards Atom’s observatory. She had been hoping to spend the night at the observatory with Atom… but then she reasoned that this could be a good chance to spend some time with him out of the observatory, with others. She wanted to know as much about him as she could. He was so mysterious, nopony knew much about him. He was a puzzle she had to solve, something she had to study, and the more she seemed to hear about him, the more she wanted to find out… and Pinkie's statement hadn’t done anything to reduce the number of questions she had. 'Why hadn’t he gone to the party? Everypony goes to Pinkie Pie's parties…'
She shook herself out of the thoughts as she realized she had been wandering for quite a while. She looked around, puzzled for a second before recognizing the trees of the Everfree Forest. ‘I must be close…’ she thought, before viewing her surroundings… she didn’t know this path… in fact, she had no idea where she was… ‘Oh no… I must have taken a wrong turn…’ She looked around frantically before stopping herself and taking a deep breath.
“Alright Twilight, calm down. Think this out logically. We’ll just turn around and follow the path back…” She said to herself, trying not to lose her nerve. She turned around and started to walk back along the path, but then came to a junction and paused.
She stood staring at the junction for about 5 minutes, looking between the paths. She had absolutely no memory of which one she came from, and was slowly imagining more grave and horrifying consequences of picking the wrong path. Her mind wandered much further than it should have. Just as the most terrifying of these imaginings ended she was a loud and unnatural noise emanating from one of the paths. This subsequently kicked her overly inflated sense of fear into overdrive. Her muscles tensed as she jumped into the air and galloped in the opposite direction… further into the forest…
After several minutes of racing through the forest, her muscles burned and she was completely out of breath. She slumped to the ground. Completely exhausted, and barely able to move, she just laid there and panted. She would have passed out if not for the sheer force of terror that kept her eyes wide open. After what felt like an eternity to Twilight, she regained feeling in her limbs and slowly got up, aching all over, and looked around in an attempt to get her bearings. She could tell it was still early afternoon from the sun, but she wasn’t sure how far into the forest she was. She decided to try to head back towards Ponyville by following the sun. But soon the trees became too dense to see it's light and she started to get worried again.
It got darker and darker as she kept walking until she could barely see. She stopped and looked back towards the lighter area of the forest. Suddenly a shadow darted across her view. She backed away a bit, turned, and kept going. Quickly. It didn’t get any darker, but the dot of light showing where she had come from slowly faded into nothing, making it impossible to tell if she was heading in the right direction. The fact the darkness meant she couldn’t even distinguish each tree from another didn’t help the case; they simply blended into a solid wall of mass.
As she went deeper the air started to get unusually moist and stuffy. This puzzled her a little, so she moved to wall of trees for guidance. Her hoof was met with the unmistakeable clack of her hoof hitting damp rock. She started with surprise, causing her hoof to slip form the wall, making her stumble. She tried to right her balance, but ended up stumbling the other way, her legs getting in the way of each other. Her hoof met air where the ground should have been and she slipped, tumbling head over hoof off the unseen cliff.
She fell for what felt like minutes until she collided with something that felt solid but quickly gave way. She slowly started to sink. Her mouth quickly filled with water, causing her to come quickly to the conclusion she was in a body of water. She quickly clamped her mouth shut to save what air she had left. She opened her eyes trying frantically to find which way was up, and she happened to see a flicker of light above her. She quickly started to swim upwards as fast as she could with her limited aquatic skills. Seconds ticked by as she frantically reached for the surface, as her vision started to darken and flicker as she began slipping out of consciousness.
She felt the sting of cold air as she surfaced. She gasped for air, but for a moment only water filled her lungs. After a coughing fit that made colors and shapes swim across her eyes, she gasped again, finding the sudden intake of air a shock as it stung her lungs. Her eyes swam again. After a short she was able to breathe more easily so she looked around, seeing the cave light dimply with a kind of glowing stone. As she turned her head she spotted a small sandy shore within the cave and started to swim toward it. A task that would normally be relatively simple burned at her lungs and made her muscles cry out in protest.
She dragged her self ashore, panting heavily and collapsed with her legs still dangling in the water, gasping for air. She laid there for several more seconds until her breathing return to normal. She sat up and looked about the cave, seeing a small passageway behind her, just big enough for her to fit through comfortably. She moved along to look across the rest of the cave and spotted the cliff she had fallen from... in the large alcove a shadowy silhouette stood, staring at her, about 8 hooves tall. It had a lean build, with what looked like arms hanging down by its arms. While she was still studying it she saw it silently lurch forwards and dive into the dark depths of water below just where she herself had landed only minutes before. She immediately spun around and galloped into the passage way behind her.
She galloped through dark tunnels, the rhythmic sound of her hooves against the floor playing in stark contrast to the chaotic scuttling sounds of the creatures advance. She was racing through the passageways and tunnels but the creature continued to gain ground. Her muscles screamed out at her, her lungs burned, and she was slowing down. Before long it would catch her…before long it would all be over… all because of a wrong turn…
She rounded a corner and went straight into a solid wall, it was a dead end. She tried to retreat back into the main tunnel, but the creature was already in the entrance. The sinister being was shrouded in shadows. It moved slowly toward her as she cowered away against the wall. Each step it took made an eerie clacking noise, each one counting down the seconds she had to live. She sobbed quietly in fear. This was it. She was too exhausted to do any magic. She was defenseless, this was it… the end… she wished she could see her friends one last time… Pinkie Pie… Rarity… Applejack… Flutttershy… Rainbow Dash… Atom… ‘If only Atom were here, he’d know what to do… he’d find a way out’ she thought sadly,
“Oh Atom, I wish you were here…” Were her last quiet words before the creature raised its razor sharp hooked claw for the single killing blow…
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Ok, Finally done! I think this is much better, I tied to balance pace with description