//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 // Story: A Changeling Heart // by Rocket Lawn Chair //------------------------------// *** Twilight’s head swam in a sea of darkness suffused with constant numbness. There was nothing to feel or be felt. Her head could have been floating a million miles away from her body and she wouldn’t know it. She didn’t know what it felt like to be dead, but she guessed this probably wasn’t far from it. Her first sensation was similar to what your eyes experience after being in pitch darkness for a long time, or your ears upon hearing a sound after complete silence. A jolt of searing pain collided with her body like a meteor from space. Her eyes snapped open. She immediately shut them again as the pain shot up her right side and crawled up her neck. She let out a yelp and rolled over onto her back, then groaned as a badly-placed rock dug into her spine. When she’d taken a moment to recover, she pried her eyelids open a tiny fraction, desperate to know if she’d find herself in a dream or reality, or something worse than either. The world came spilling into her vision. The night was still lingering in its deepest hours. The stars were still glittering, the moon still on display, which made Twilight think she must have been out for hardly more than an hour. She blinked. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the clear moonlight splashed around the rim of the canyon, then she laid her head back and sighed with relief, stroking the dirt beneath her hooves. The ground was probably the furthest thing from comfortable, but at least it was finally real. Luna was known to make incredibly vivid dreams, but she may have outdone herself this time. Then the memory of the dream came crashing back into Twilight’s head, and something in her head clicked. “Alya…..” She propped herself upright with a straining effort. Her leg still throbbed painfully with the energy of her regeneration spell. The gash had healed over well, but the bones and muscles in her leg must still be reconstructing themselves. It took every ounce of her effort to drag herself backwards so she could lean against the cliff. “Alya!” She took several deep breaths, wiping cold sweat from her brow. Alya couldn’t have gone too far. The pale moonlight made the labyrinth of crags and canyons look even more mysterious and ominous, as though anything could be lurking within any one of those looming shadows. Her eyes darted between black, stony crevices and wide, moonlit outcroppings that spilled over into some unknowable depths. It would be a simple matter for a small child to become lost in this place, or worse. She cupped her hooves to her mouth. “Alya! Where are you?” No answer came, and Twilight’s heartbeat quickened. Alya had been right beside her when she passed out, and if Twilight really had been out for around an hour—well, any number of terrible things could have happened to her. She made an effort to rise to her hooves, then instantly collapsed again. Her right leg was nowhere near ready to carry her weight. She grumbled, then tried an alternate strategy by bracing her left hoof against the cliff and her right wing extended to balance her stance. It did the trick in a pinch. She then made an effort at limping, which proved difficult at first as the left half of her body was still numb from having been slept on for the past hour. After a few painful falls she managed to find her hoofing, and started limping about in search of Alya. She scoured the crevice where she’d made camp, then she checked around the huge stone slabs just outside. Lastly she came to the edge of the outcrop and peered over the precipice, down into the canyon. Nothing but blackness and hollow wind below her. “Alya!” she shouted again. “Alya! Alyaaaa!” Her echo returned after a second or two. It sounded even more desperate than she thought it would. Her stomach lurched at the thought of what might be lurking down there. Twilight cast a spell that sent a floating purple light into the heart of the canyon. It traveled deeper, deeper, until it was so deep that the light became little more than a speck in a sea of blackness. Then the light became swallowed up, and Twilight gulped. There was no way Alya would have survived a fall like that. A chilly gust leapt up the canyon wall and sent Twilight’s mane into a frenzy. She stumbled back from the ledge, lost her balance, then fell to the ground with a thud and a scream. She watched her leg shift sickeningly without the bone to support it, then clutched her stomach, thinking that legs were not supposed to bend that way. She sprawled out on the ground and took several slow, deep breaths while she watched the stars overhead. When she felt that the sickness had passed, she propped herself upright once again, and glared at the canyon. How was she going to do this? Flying down seemed out of the question with those unpredictable air currents blasting around down below. The thought of teleportation briefly flickered across her mind, but she took one look at her limp right leg and instantly crossed out that option. There were no clear hoofpaths that she had noticed the previous day or just now, even if she was in any fit condition to traverse them. Another gust of wind howled out of the bowels of the canyon, sending a chill down Twilight’s spine. She slumped back to the ground, at a loss of what to do. The details of her dream with Luna came creeping back into her memory. Even though Luna had only been in her mind and was about as expressive as a brick wall, Twilight knew that Luna had been right. She would never have confronted the truth by herself. She seriously wondered if there was a problem Luna could not solve by simply sitting aloof at an imaginary table, sipping imaginary tea. But there was only so far her sister’s power could reach, and it didn’t extend as far as getting Twilight to the bottom of this canyon to find Alya. She still wasn’t even certain that Alya had actually fallen down there, but her brief search hadn’t turned up any leads. Feeling utterly lost and alone, Twilight did the only thing that seemed logical anymore: she broke down and began to sob. Whenever Twilight was afraid she liked to think about Celestia; her kind and loving mentor, her wife, and the love of her life. Now all she could think about was her daughter. Alya had been such a beautiful filly, so happy, full of innocence, full of wonder. She had a soft mane of turquoise as deep as the sky in spring, a sparkling giggle like the pitter-patter of a brook through an airy glade. She could only just remember those things now, as they had been before Alya had changed, and Twilight clung as tightly as she could to those memories. She thought of how things could have been different if she and Celestia had never decided to adopt Alya. She paused in her thought to imagine having no memories of Alya at all. Her ears suddenly perked up. The wind was loud enough to pierce through her sobs, but she thought she heard another sound—a sound within the wind. Twilight summoned what little strength she had to drag herself to the edge of the canyon once more. She dipped her head downwards, and listened. When the wind came again, Twilight definitely heard the sound this time. The sound was of somepony crying, somepony very lost and afraid. She was crying for her mama. What most ponies mean by the idiom, “Like a bat out of Tartarus,” is that someone or something is hurtling out of control, destroying everything in their path like they’ve just been spat out of the depths of Tartarus in a ball of fire. As it turns out, this is a very accurate way to describe a mother rushing to save her child. As soon as Twilight heard Alya’s cries, her wings were open and the pain in her leg seemed to vanish completely. Nothing, not even the gates of Tartarus, was going to stand in her way. With a lunge and a mighty burst of light from her horn, Twilight dove headlong into the canyon, her wings pushing her downwards faster than gravity would allow. The wind howled past her face, pressing her ears against her head and causing her eyes to water profusely. She blinked the tears away and kept her eyes trained dead ahead of her, while her glowing horn cut through the darkness with a piercing ray of purple light. She strained her ears catch the faint cries, and followed them deeper into the abyss. Suddenly the crying ceased, and Twilight halted her descent. The icy air gripped her all at once, causing her to gasp and briefly lose equilibrium. She flailed through the air for a split second before returning her wings to steady beat and rectifying herself. It was deathly still all of a sudden, not even the wind howled. Twilight looked up to moon, which looked terribly distant now. She was so deep that the inky blackness seemed to be swallowing up the night sky from below. Where had the cries gone now? There wasn’t a sound to be heard besides the flapping of her wings. Nothing in that black world below stirred, or at least nothing that could be seen. Had it just been her feverish imagination? A tremendous dread sunk in as Twilight imagined she was diving wildly into a dark, fathomless tomb. “Mama!” The cry came again—this time much fainter, but certainly real—and Twilight dove after it, fearing she might lose it again. The wind became more erratic, forcing Twilight to draw her wings close, putting her into a much faster but less controlled descent. Temperature dropped by the foot as the blackness became more absolute, and the cries became gradually stronger. Twilight focused only on the cries—ignoring her aching wings and her freezing limbs—and continued her fall. It was taking an unsettlingly long time to reach the bottom. She felt she must be nearing the depth where her light had disappeared. The ground came into view beneath the light of her horn. She sighed with some relief, but something wasn’t right about the landscape. It looked featureless, even formless. There were no rocks jutting from it, nor any cracks sitting in the earth, it simply looked like the surface of a darkly ominous ocean, and it had a strangely fuzzy quality to it. It appeared to be moving, even seething, roiling and belching huge black clouds into the air. A foul scent filled Twilight’s nostrils as she approached it. “Oh-ack! What is this?” she choked. The smoke covered her body, stung her eyes, tightened her throat, made her skin prickle. All of her senses were swarmed simultaneously by the deadly fumes. She rose out of the toxic cloud, taking several deep breaths while her vision cleared and her head stopped spinning. She cast a spell, and a magical purple bubble appeared around her, creating a fresh air barrier. Then, with reignited vigor, she continued her plummet into the toxic fog. Alya was somewhere down there. The true bottom of the canyon must not be far off, but she had little notion of how close she was. Her bubble spell proved top-notch to ward off the fumes, but her light was practically useless at this point, with the thick clouds pressing so heavily around her. All she had was the reassurance that her daughter’s voice was getting stronger. “Mamaaaaa!” The cry kicked up to a terrified pitch. Twilight pressed her wings to her side and shot like lightning through the haze. “Alya!” she screamed, “Where are you? Mama's coming!” She shot a furious beam from her horn that cut through the clouds, and before she quite knew what was happening, the air around her erupted in a purple fireball. She took a perilous dive to dodge it, and a split second later found herself plowing face-first into something black and sticky. It was hot, and filled her ears and nostrils almost instantly, but by the time she’d managed to extract her head, the rest of her body was already sinking into it. She lifted her forehooves above the surface, then tried to free her wings. Her eyes suddenly felt like they were melting out of their sockets, and then she realized that her protective spell had broken. Rushing to cast another spell—because the overwhelming fumes were probably killing her faster than the tar—Twilight fumbled, managing to spit a few miserable sparks from the tip of her horn. It took her two more tries before she got it right, and by then her wings were hopelessly stuck. At least her head and forehooves were out, and at least she didn’t have tar in her eyes or mouth, but she was still sinking. Before long she’d be stuck up to her neck. She looked around desperately. The clouds hung thick as pitch, making it impossible to see anything more than ten yards away. Thinking quickly, Twilight tried to collect her bearings and aim herself in approximately the direction she’d last heard Alya’s cry. The light from her horn swelled and hummed. She shook her head and moaned. “Please, no more sharp rocks….” There was a decisive crack, a bright flash, and she was gone. Less than a split second later, a terrified scream rang out fifty feet away. Twilight fell, her limbs flailing, until she landed with a heavy thud on a slick stone ledge. She tumbled head-over-hooves without any notion of which way was up or down. She managed to snag a protruding rock just before spiraling down into the depths of a bottomless chasm. For several sickening hours, which in reality was only ten seconds, she clung on at the edge of the overhang, unable to hoist herself out. When she finally did, she rolled onto her back and watched bright flashes pop into her vision. Her chest heaved and her whole body trembled. “That better be….the last time….I ever need to teleport like that,” she wheezed. She peered down at her body, then slumped back to the ground. Still completely coated in sticky tar. She wanted to cry again. She wanted to scream, or tear the whole world apart, but for now she could only sigh. “Gonna be a nightmare…...just getting this stuff…..out of my wings.” For several minutes she lay very still, counting her heartbeats and waiting for them to stop pounding in her ears. Her energy was almost completely spent in that Bat-out-of-Tartarus blaze to the bottom of the canyon, but at last she was here. At length she rose to her hooves. The searing pain in her leg had settled into a warm background sensation of constant burning. She tried moving it, and immediately regretted doing so, making a little yelp as the pain flared up. The bone had finally grown in, and so too, it seemed, had the nerves. Still not quite ready to be useful. She refreshed her protective spell and then tried to do something about the tar. It clung in her fur, her mane, some of it was still seeping into her ear, and to make matters worse, it smelled awful. She tried extracting it with a spell, but the tar had some weak magical repulsion, so the best she could do was clean out her ears and some of her wings. Flying from now on, she thought, would have to be limited to short bursts. She turned her attention to the chasm below. A weak greenish light rose from the heavy haze beneath her, coming from deep within the bowels of the earth. Tar oozed from cracks in the wall and slid downwards in great, steaming, black globs before dripping off and becoming consumed by the pit. Twilight peered down over the ledge, and shuddered. Nothing wholesome lived in this place. Twilight gave her neck a few good cracks, shook herself, then limped to the edge. She flexed her wings, drawing a few steady breaths and tried not to think about what awaited her down below the earth. “Just keep thinking about other things: more picnics by the lake, the smell of Celestia’s mane, Alya’s adorable smile. Just keep thinking about Alya…” She took a deep breath, and then leaped, keeping her thoughts firmly on her daughter as she plummeted headfirst into the heart of the changeling hive.