Hoof Steps in the Dark

by Fuzzyfurvert

...

***

Twilight jerked awake.

She gasped. She’d fallen asleep again. She grit her teeth and forced herself to hold her breath. To hold still. To feel. There is was again. The tickle at her neck. The barest hint of moving air in this lightless tunnel.

There was an exit.

Twilight let her held breath out slowly and gripped the cave floor with her hooves and roughed up knees. There was an exit. She was getting out of this. One hoof forward. One haunch back. Inch by inch, no matter how long it took.

Ten or so agonizing, cramped lurches later, Twilight was starting to wonder if she could risk a breather. Her level of exhaustion was off any sort of scale she could imagine. Everything in her body was either screaming in sharp pain or troublingly numb. Time had effectively ceased to have meaning in the dark. She couldn’t tell if she’d been in the narrow tunnel for a few minutes or a day. She needed rest and water, medical grade magic was going to be required to get back up to any real speed, but right now, she’d settle for just laying still and playing dead.

She kept one ear tilted back, turned back behind her and listening for anything. Anything other than sounds she made herself. Her labored breathing, her undercarriage rubbing raw on the floor, her fluttering heartbeat. The underground air lay heavy with silence otherwise, like a cold blanket that cut her off from the rest of the world and refused to get warm or comfortable. She wanted to scream. To call out. But what would be the point? Nopony would hear her. Nopony would find her.

She was alone.

She was so very tired.

One hoof forward.

***

Twilight jerked awake.

She gasped, only to cough violently a second later through chattering teeth. She’d passed out again. She was on her side, pressed into the wall as tight as could be, shivering her body over. The chill was intense and felt bone-deep in her. Twilight coughed again, forcing herself out of the shallow hollow that she was cradled in. She lifted her head carefully, mindful of the low clearance and the hanging roots. Sitting up cleared her thoughts. Whimpering, her adjusted her wings, spreading her feathers out over her flanks and back. Then Twilight started to bring in her legs, one by one, until she was sitting properly. All the little bumps and bruises woke up to complain anew, but she ignored them with tears dripping from her muzzle.

“You will...sit still, Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight growled. “Y-you will warm yourself. Ignore...ignore the pain. It’s just...it is just your body telling you...it’s still alive.” She spread her wings a bit more, letting them drape around her to the dirt. Slowly, the air on her skin, mixed in her coat and feathers, warmed. The shivering started to ease.

Twilight opened her eyes and immediately wanted to go back to the warmer darkness behind her eyelids. This black void looked even colder to her somehow. She blinked away the tears that still clung to her lashes. “What’s the point? Am I just going to die down here?”

Twilight groaned, wishing again that she had better knowledge of healing magics. Not that she had the mana left to use any, but if she could get real rest instead of passing out and waking up again after some indeterminable time, it’d really help.

***

Comments

[Lexiebommel10]

Stop passing out silly

[Phara]

Jesus how long has she been down there if she's passed out like 3 times already

[Lotus Moon]