Her muscles burned from the strain of constant movement as she sprinted through the harsh stone labyrinth, walls closed around her and tiles on the floor fell into nothingness in an attempt to impede her but she ran on, desperate to escape.
The world was made of blacks, reds and an overpowering feeling of wrongness that pressed oppressively down upon the women. Almost tripping she pushed onwards running in blind fear. She pushed off a stone wall and ran down the endless tunnel her head snapping back and forth looking into any shadow or nook her body burning coldly as she ran from the dark thing that gave chase.
Suddenly she was in a wide room, the walls were made from pale stone blocks stacked neatly and the floor had a layer of wood and a fine red rug. Confused she stepped forward looking around for an exit to the strange room and finding nothing.
Approaching a old looking wooden desk coated in a dark varnish she looked at the messy paperwork on the desk, quills and ink bottles intermixed with old looking scrolls and documents, black patches of ink and brown circles from wet mugs stained the table.
“Where are you” A distinctly feminine voice spoke behind her. Turning on her heel she saw a shadow that shifted and changed before her eyes into the shape of an equine with wings and a horn “Where are you hiding” the equine asked hissing and rushing forwards its horn flashing brightly.
She awoke with a start pushing herself to her feet and looking around frowning as her heart settled down, slowing from its furious pace. Shaking her head she disregarded the nightmare, getting to her feet and looking around she moved to see outside her cave.
The sun was rising into the sky slowly, hidden by the heavily overcast sky a dark bank of clouds silver and grey spread endlessly across the sky. Taking a step forward she thought carefully about what she would do today, she could investigate the Canine tribe and see if she could start some rudimentary communication. She could try to find out where the equines were coming from, no doubt they had some form of settlement or an outpost of some sort to keep track of the region.
With the quality of the clothes and the variety of equipment the Equines must have some form of fabrication capacity, however they had shown a shoot first mentality the day before, and she doubted she had given the best impression.
Deciding to explore some more she set out at a sedate pace as the snow began to fall twisting and spinning in the air wondrously.
From the shadowy entrance of the cave Luna reformed her body watching with a smirk as the Faceless creature left, she sighed and turned to walk into the cave itself peering around with interest. She would have to watch this creature for a while, learn its habits, behaviour and nutritional requirements if she were to add it to her collection, her sister had still not forgiven her for the pony eating plant she had added to the public gardens after all.
Entering the root of the cave Luna found herself in a open round chamber. Lighting her horn with a thought she pressed her magic outwards looking for hoarded food or filth to determine if she would need to find meat for it. Frowning the mare turned to look at a loose pile of mushrooms and dirt piled into one corner and moved towards it her magic clearing the dirt away to reveal a smooth black box.
Lifting it before her Luna remembered that the Scout Sergeant had told her that the Creature had taken the box from the broken egg, no doubt some ancient and powerful magical artifact. Perfect, she had been meaning to give Twilight a gift, the scholarly mare would love the chance to play with something ancient, powerful and deadly.
Letting the box fall into her mane for now, Luna left the cave and set about tracking the Faceless, her wings flaring out as she tapped into her Alicorn mastery of magic. It looked like it was headed in the direction of the Empire, how interesting.
The air grew steadily warmer and the snow thinned as she explored, it was not long before, like stepping into another world. She had seen the great green disk from afar, green and brown farmland surrounded a purple settlement and the entire unnatural thing was still in ice cold territory. Sneaking within the disk she felt the warm air through the armour, the ground was green and lush, great spires of jagged crystal grew from the ground like trees and neatly ordered plots of farmland surrounded her.
Sneaking through a field of wheat, she approached a building, most probably a barn of some sort, she was unsure of the agricultural sophistication of the locals but given that the wheat was all the same type and there were neatly arranged orchards closer to the settlement led her to assume that they were fairly competent farmers, what did concern her however was the lack of smoke in the settlement, there was no fires burning and sneaking through the fields she had yet to find a single equine about the place and no sign of industrialization, she hoped dearly that they were not exiled luddites who used some form of technology to keep the region farmable.
Entering the barn she found herself overlooking a long table filled with food. Cakes, apples, breads, cheese. Evidence had been pointing to this world having some impressive convergent evolution but given that she did not know of this world's history she had no way of knowing why so many things on this planet where common on Terraformed worlds, this world could very well have been terraformed and she would have no way of knowing, not that it mattered.
Spotting a worn looking brown cloth bag she picked it up and looked inside. A book, a tin with some pink dust within it, a coil of copper wire, a short iron rod, three intricately crafted rings and a candle did not give her any real clue as to what the owner of the bag’s occupation was but the things inside might prove useful, the copper, iron and the minerals in the rings could be broken down and used to begin her work on the Genesis Device, the book would also be invaluable as a first step for her to begin communication with the locals, however that would take a long time.
Slinging the bag over her shoulder she approached the food on the table before stuffing the bread and apples into the bag without much ceremony and then looking at the cake. A quick check over her body told her that while her lungs were almost fully adapted to the mix of chemicals that made up the local atmosphere she would be unable to push herself too hard if she was to begin relying on it in any real capacity. However with a mighty rumble her belly told her to take this opportunity to eat the food now, her lungs would be adapted in a few days regardless.
With a thought her visor began to melt outwards, the material slinking out of the way to expose her gel coated face to the world around her before the gel too began to move, flowing outwards and exposing her face to the foreign environment. Her body arching and convulsing like a cat with a hairball she opened her mouth as a torrent of clear silky fluid emptied out onto the hard dirt of the barn floor,first her lungs were emptied and then her stomach of the life supporting fluids in a seemingly unending stream. Spitting the last dregs of the oxygenated and nutrition rich fluid from her mouth she gasped in the cool air panting and feeling slightly lightheaded and giddy.
With a smile she got to her feet and moved towards the table to take her first bite of food picking up a slice of the cake and bringing it towards her exposed mouth.