//------------------------------//
// Floor Two - Luxuria 
// Story: The Long Dark 
// by NeverEatTheLemonsAlone 
//------------------------------//

At last, she woke up, and could see again.

Once she opened her eyes, she wished that it was not so.

Stretching out endlessly before her was an enormous barren field of stone. No pits, no caves, no end in sight. Rain lashed it as gale-force winds blew the freezing precipitation about, buffeting her fur and soaking her near-instantly. She shivered as she felt her body grow cold. Off in the distance, she could hear pained howling, and as she strained her eyes through the tempest, she could see ponies trying their hardest to beat through it. They were having little luck, and she was having even less. The wind caught her wings and she felt them expand, the bones snapping even further as she screamed hoarsely.

"Girl? Is that you?"

It was a recognizable voice, and as the wind blew the other way and the pain abated slightly, she turned to see a familiar stallion. "Teller? H—What? Where are we?" Her voice trembled with pain, fear and confusion. "What's happening? I fell asleep in the caves and now I'm in this storm. What are we doing here? How did we get here?'

Teller shook his head, where and pointed upwards with a single hoof. Peering into the maelstrom with her hawk-keen eyes, she could faintly see a black blotch in the world above her, above the clouds. "We fell," he responded. "After I finished speaking with you, you just vanished. I kept wandering past where I should've been asleep and finally, I came to a great pit. Underneath me was dim gray light. I wondered what it could've been, and so I jumped."

She gaped at him, eyes bugging out. "But...you aren't a pegasus! How did you survive the fall?"

He chuckled faintly and waved his hoof, then turned and walked off. "Perhaps I'll see you again, miss. I do hope you remember who you are eventually."

She dashed after him as he disappeared into the endless driving ran. No matter how quickly she ran, though, he ran faster, and eventually outpaced her, vanishing into the torrent. At last she came to a stop. Beneath her was a great precipice, an enormous cliff that fell for many miles before her, before coming into contact with another of the endless stone plains. Sprawled out before her, the endless monotone horizon stretched on, and on the plain beneath her she saw ponies.

Not brightly coloured ponies, no. Not the ponies she was used to. No, these ponies were barely even recognizable as such. The endless driving rain had stripped their coats of colour and lustre, rendering them into shambling gray and brown beasts, groaning in pain as they pushed their way through the rains. Occasionally, one fell, only to rise again and resume its endless struggle of stinging needles of water and constant hurricane winds.

Glancing around, she noticed a crude, steep staircase carved into the stone nearby. Picking her way carefully over to it—with a broken pair of wings, slippery ground, and a massive cliff, one could never be too sure—she began to climb slowly down. It took days, and yet it felt like it took no time at all. Did time even pass here, in this non-life? She looked out at the exposed sky, seeing no variance at all from the past hours of grueling toil. 

Days wore on into weeks, and weeks wore on into months, and months wore on into years. Yet she never seemed to reach the end of the staircase. She never found a way down to the poor masses below. Because finally, as she turned around and took the first step back up, she found herself once more at the top of the cliff, looking down. She looked much different from the pony that had woken up in the pouring rain, as the interminable storm ground away at her sanity. Her eyes were bloodshot and wide, perpetually flicking back and forth. Her muscles occasionally spasmed. Worst of all, though, was how her mind was affected.

Ponies are herd animals. They are not meant to live in eternal solitude, nor are they meant to live in endless rain. She was truly talking to herself now, having long, drawn-out conversations with the other pegasi surrounding her in her loneliness. She would talk until her throat ran dry, and then continue moving her mouth, not caring whether or not words came out. No matter how much of the stormwater she caught in her mouth, it never seemed to slake her endless thirst.

At last, as she felt ready to give up, she felt a warm hoof on her back and Teller appeared beside her once more. "Having a rough time of it, huh, kid?" he asked sympathetically. She stared up at him nearly uncomprehendingly. He sighed. "It's painful to see you brought so low, miss. You seemed so lively before."

She looked back up at him with half-dead eyes, her voice a barely-formed whisper. "The rain just...keeps going. It never stops. Why won't it stop? Why can't I make it stop?"

Teller hesitated for a moment, then dropped his shoulders and sighed. "Look...alright. It might end up worse for you, but...if you really want to get out of here, you need to trust me." She gazed up at him, hoping against hope that she would finally find a way out of this neverending storm.

"It's very simple. You know the big cliff?" The pegasus nodded, and Teller continued. "Good. Jump off of it."

Without protest, she slunk off to the cliff and, not missing a beat, slung herself off of it.

As she fell, she began to feel something important flickering into her mind. Something to do with...her. Her name. She strained to catch it, but just as it was within reach, she hit the ground and the entire world went mercifully black.