The Failed Spell

by silverspawn

Chapter 9

An hour had passed, and they were still alive.

Despite their fear, and despite the unpleasantness of the task, they had stuck to their decision and eaten more, first hoping to do so until their hunger would pass, and when that failed to happen, until Twilight decided to stop. The tree had remained still, and so they had taken another dozen fruits with them, renewed Twilight's link to two of the birds, and left.

Now, Twilight could feel her anxiety growing with every passing second that the hunger burned inside her. She knew little about the delay with which different kinds of food were digested, didn't know whether or not what Rarity had said also applied to food, and didn't find it in herself to ask. Neither were things guaranteed to work the same was as they did back home, nor would knowing what was going to happen even be helpful.

Home...

The cold was coming back, and along with it, Twilight found a growing desire for warmth and physical proximity awakening inside her. Occasionally, she would pause just to lean her head against Rarity’s shoulder, and every so often, she'd ask for a hug. Whatever she desired, Rarity would give it to her, reliable, generous.

Eventually, the fourth day came to a close, and they went to rest despite the cold. This time, the dome did not stay, but disappeared as it should, and Twilight found herself drenched from head to tail when she awoke, shivering, freezing.

Cold. It was so cold. With numb limbs, she recast the dome, and against her better judgement, she also cast the spell which she had used at the start of the third day, drying both Rarity and herself. Everything seemed strangely surreal when she leaned down to wake up her friend; the guilt she felt, almost forgotten, was calling attention to itself, scratching at a wounded part at the edge of her mind...

They continued, and Twilight didn’t seem to be able to take her eyes off Rarity’s pendant. Like the crows, like the orb, like the tree, it had all become a symbol in her mind, and the pendant symbolized home. Home, which she wanted to reach so, so much, and yet not nearly as much as she wanted Rarity to... if only Rarity would make it, then everything... everything would be alright...

A shiver ran down her spine. In a moment of desperation, she bit her tongue until it bled, and she cut her connection to the crows who still had not moved from the branches of the forsaken tree. Her eyes closed, she tried to focus on the pain and the taste of blood, rather than the cold or the hunger.

The hunger that wouldn't go away.

“Rarity?”

Rarity turned her head.

“Can I borrow your pendant?”

“The element? What for?”

“I... don’t know. I... just want to hold it.”

But Rarity did not let it slide. “Are you hoping to find a spell? Twilight?”

Twilight swallowed, a lump forming in her throat. Rarity had not added an affectionate term of endearment, something which she had done almost every time she had addressed her like this...

Perhaps...

“Darling?”

Something poked at her shoulder. When she looked down, she saw the the pendant enclosed in a gray cloud, its chain folded together.

Rarity lowered her head, giving her a long, inquiring look.

“Twilight? Sweetheart? Is something wrong?”

“I’m... getting unstable,” Twilight murmured. “When you didn’t say ‘darling,’ for a moment I thought...”

Rarity gave a slow nod. “I see. I can assure you that your worries are unfounded, then.” She leaned forward to give Twilight a hug, letting it last long, much longer than any one she had given before.

It was exactly the answer Twilight had needed.

When Rarity parted, Twilight blinked the tears out of her eyes, looking for the item she had asked for...

It had dropped onto the ground.

For a few moments, she simply stared at it. Careful, even though it shouldn't be necessary, she lit her horn to pick it up, and slowly put it on. Then, she gave a nod.

“Before we continue, could you fetch me a bit of water?”

Twilight nodded again, doing as she was asked whilst sending her mind to wander. There were no ways for her to see if they were being deceived, but maybe there was something she could do with this element? Anything?

Of course, the answer was no. She brought the summoned bowl to Rarity’s mouth, all the while feeling the touch of the pendant on her breast, but not sensing so much as a trace of it on the magical plane. And there was no reason why she should, either. Twilight was far from understanding how the elements worked, but she understood enough about how their disturbance of regular magic worked to know that it needed up from four of them for something to happen.

And yet...

Twilight closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing. Even though she had fully recovered her ability to freeze, right now, she did not.

Right now, she felt exhausted, worn out, but in a different way than before. They had not changed their tempo for even a moment, not cantered once, knowing that doing so would cost them more strength than walking at a steady pace. All exhaustion they had felt had been a result of coldness, fatigue, and emotional strain, never one of physical struggle. But now, it felt as though walking itself was an exertion, as if simply putting one hoof in front of the other would exhaust her capabilities, require all of her strength.

The things this made her feel were preferable to the cold and desolation, but the implications it brought were worrisome. The reason she did not freeze was quite simply the additional heat her body produced, but this heat came at the cost of her remaining reserves. It was the same reason they had chosen not to quicken their speed.

Twilight could feel her horn and what little energy was drained through it to keep up the dome. She could feel her heart pumping, and the blood rushing through her head, and she knew that the only reason she was not sweating was the coldness of the world outside.

Realizing that she had been walking for about a minute without so much as a look at her surroundings, she paused to redo the location spell, but it pointed straight ahead. Without exchanging a word with Rarity, she took a short breath and continued.

“Twilight?”

“I need a break,” came Twilight’s answer, and she stopped in her walk, taking long, heavy breaths. She felt as though she had just run several miles.

Rarity nodded and offered a front limb, as if wanting to take her out. When Twilight took it, she pulled her down, and cuddled up against each other, they half-lay, half-sat onto the soil.

“Walking has gotten harder for you, dear, has it not?”

Twilight nodded.

“So it has for me. Twilight, I think the fruits we ate might not have served us well.”

The only answer Twilight could give was a sob. She did not want it to be true.

“Have they satisfied your hunger?”

“No.” Twilight could feel that she was going to cry. She had cried a lot these past days, and it seemed to take less and less to get here there every time.

“Shh... darling. There is still hope for us. We could reach the world at every minute.”

Twilight nodded again, but could not muster up another answer.

Home...

“Though, I suppose, even reaching the world does not guarantee our safety, does it?”

“If we reach anypony,” Twilight mumbled. “I could...” Breathing... exhaustion... “Anyone...” She cast a glance downward, at the element that now hung from her head.

“Do you want your pendant back?” she asked in a whisper.

“No,” Rarity said. “Keep it.”

Twilight let out a strained breath, her eyes fixated on the diamond. Then, letting her mind drift onto the magical plane, she reached out, directing her senses onto the element. Soon, she could feel the proximity of metal, cold, cold as the world outside. When she reached out further, she could feel the insides of the metal body, and there...

Nothing. There was no energy resting within the element, no magic she could access. There was nothing. The pendant was a piece of jewelry with no magic to speak of... not on its own.

Nothing...

Their time was running up.

Twilight knew this, and she knew that Rarity knew it too, but neither of them said anything. They had dropped the fruits they had carried, but the damage was already done. Rather than quenching their hunger, they seemed to have added to it, as everything Twilight now felt would be explained by her reserves finally running low. Even her spell, which should have caused them nausea or pain upon the induction of food, seemed to indicate this, as it had failed to deliver either of those. In fact, save for the hunger, she seemed to be healthy. The pain in her hooves had decreased to a bearable amount, and any stain on her mind seemed to have vanished.

Now, instead of feeling like she was walking through a hell of coldness and emotional torture, it simply felt as though her body was being driven to its limits. There was an exhaustion slowly building up inside her, and it carried with it a sense of finality that was as new to her as it was frightening. Deep inside, she believed to feel the promise of rest, of a peace that would at last free her from all the struggles of this world, but her spirit was too adamant about staying alive, too scared of the inevitability of death, for it to be more than a dark and terrifying deception. Her composure may have been crippled, her body weakened, but her will was not and would never be bent. She knew that it could only end in two ways, with them reaching civilization or with them dying in its pursuit, and as long as there was any hope left, she would keep on trying.

And Rarity...

“You won’t give up, will you?”

Twilight could tell from watching her friend that Rarity felt just as exhausted as she did. Upon her call, she took several seconds to take a few, long breaths, her eyes closed, before she opened them and gave an answer.

“No. Not as long as you are there.”

They looked into each other's eyes, and Twilight could feel a new source of resolve, of hope, maybe even of strength.

Without saying anything else, they continued their walk.

Onward.

Until all hope would be gone.

Towards home.

Despite the feeling of finality that hung above both of their heads, the end did not seem to be quite there, not yet. The fifth day came to a close, and they both went to rest, exhausted to a point where Twilight's sleeping spell was unlikely to even be necessary. But when the sixth day came, it brought with it a different kind of exhaustion.

She was meeting her end. It had been clear on the day before, but what she felt now overshadowed everything she had felt then, a point she hadn't even known existed before. She could feel her remaining strength dwindling, every step taking a bit out of her final reserves. Little had she known that starvation could have this effect on ponies, but every touch seemed to weigh more heavily and last on longer than normal, as if her body simply lacked the strength to repel the pain, a worn down husk that was incapable of regenerating. At one point, she bit her tongue by accident, and instead of vanishing after a few seconds, the pain stayed with her for several minutes.

And her hooves hurt with every step. It was a different kind of pain then before, merely the sum of their every impact with the ground, but it was one that was even more harrowing. And yet, she did not stop, she could not stop. If she asked for a pause now, to wait until the pain went away, then they'd never continue. The pain would never go away, not until they found real food.

She had to continue. Twilight had her mouth half opened, her tongue drawn in, and she paid attention to swallow as seldom as possible, as everything she did now caused her pain. The steps she took were steady and calculated, and so was her breathing. She did not even want to talk, not anymore.

When the day stretched on, she gradually realized that there would not be a tomorrow. Her reserves would last for most of this day, and no longer.

Six days. Six days they had lasted. Days that might have been longer or shorter than normal days, but not by much.

Twilight knew that her spell to slow down starvation was working, and she knew that things had been different before the tree. She might have had hallucinations, experienced inscrutable pain, but never had she felt as though their time was running up faster than it should.

The fruits were killing them. They might not have poisoned them in conventional ways, but they were killing them all the same. They had drained their reserves rather than adding to them, and now, it was as though twenty or more days had passed.

Still she had not given up, but she knew that, rescue or the end, it was near.

And so she closed her eyes, sending her mind to wander.

One last time...

Comments

[Twilightisthebest]

Oh god I sense feels coming