Winds of Wintercrest

by Lost_Marbles

Into the White

Her scarf whipped in the wind as the snowstorm raged on. She could see only a few feet in front of her. Beyond that was a blanket of stinging white and the blurry forms of trees long dead from the cold; and that was when she looked ahead. Snow carried by the wind smacked her in the face, so she resigned herself to squinting at the ground in front of her. She had tucked her mane into her parka to keep it from blowing in her eyes. Not that it did much good.

“Sweetie Belle!” cried Rarity. “Sweetie Belle, where are you? Apple Bloom? Scootaloo?”

Every time she called, the cold bit at the inside of her mouth. Every breath was like ice, and her lungs were frozen. The winter jacket she wore kept a good deal of the cold out but left her face completely exposed.

The snow crunched under her boots as she sank up to her fetlocks in it. The winds tangled up in the trees and whistled between the branches. Rarity’s voice could only travel so far. She needed to find Sweetie Belle and her friends soon.

She prayed they’d be alright.

“Rarity! Hey, Rarity!”

Through the shrieking wind, Rarity could barely hear the voice behind her. Rainbow Dash was trudging along behind her; the wind was too much for her to fly in. She clamped her wings tightly to her torso to keep them warm. Her snow jacket and wool beanie that she had borrowed from the lodge covered everything but her wings. In her rush, she hadn’t grabbed a scarf, so she kept her chin tucked in the jacket’s collar to protect her neck from the unforgiving weather.

“Can you even see where you’re going? How are we certain those fillies went this far up the mountain?”

Rarity stopped and shouted over her shoulder. “We saw their hoofprints come up this way. There were no prints coming back. They could be lost, hurt, or worse!”

“They’re not stupid fillies! They would know better than to go through weather like this. Maybe Cheerilee and Applejack found them already. Let’s go back.”

The wind whistled in her ears, and a large, bellowing growl echoed through the white. A loud, beastly sound, as if the mountain was warning her. Rarity looked at the direction she thought the sound came from, but she couldn’t see anything.

“Rarity, look!” Rainbow pointed at the snow behind them. “Our tracks are disappearing. If we don’t go back now, we’ll get lost too.”

“But--”

“But nothing. What if Sweetie Belle were to lose you?”

She couldn’t breathe. The thought of losing Sweetie Belle bore heavily on her mind, but she never considered how hard Sweetie would take it if she were to be lost in this snow. Her imagination raced and flooded her mind with Sweetie’s ragged face when told of the terrible news; her cries and weeping filled Rarity’s head as she pictured the impact this would have had on her life. It was too much to bear. She could never do that to Sweetie.

But she had to push on! They could be lost and scared. How could she be sure if Sweetie was safe? The tracks left by the three would have vanished by now. If Rarity were to return to the cabin and venture out again, all traces of Sweetie would be gone.

Though Rainbow had a point: Sweetie was a bright filly. She’d know better than this. At the first sign of trouble, she’d head back. If anything, she was probably the most sensible out of her little club and would have convinced the others to turn back.

She bit her lip and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath to calm herself and let it out before turning back to Rainbow. “Alright, let’s go back.”

The two turned around to retrace the few tracks that were still visible, but then the ground underneath Rarity gave. She screamed as she tumbled down a slope until she hit something hard.

“Rarity? Rarity!?”

She shook away the dizziness, but the pain in her back and head remained. The grey-white sky above them was almost indistinguishable from the white shelf of snow and ice before her. Everything was a shade of white or grey until Rainbow poked her head over the cliff. She must have been twenty or so feet above her, but in this weather Rarity was robbed of any sense of distance.

“Hang on, Rares, I’m gonna find a way down. Just stay there.”

“Wait, Rain--”

She was gone.

As tempting as it would be, Rarity refused to lie down and rest. She would be buried alive in minutes. It took some rolling, but she was able to find solid ground to grip onto and push herself up. Cautiously, Rarity put more weight onto her hooves once she was sure the ground below her wouldn’t crumble away. Back on her feet, she looked around, but everything was still a blinding white, except for the tree that broke her fall and the faint shadows of the dead trees surrounding her.

Without Rainbow at her side, panic built up in her stomach. She had no idea where she was, or from which direction she had come. Even if Rainbow was able to find her, how would they know which way to go? She breathed faster with each doubt that surfaced.

No, don’t panic. Everything will work out fine. You’ll get out of this, Rarity. You’ve gotten out of worse things before.

Being a business owner had taught Rarity there was always something proactive that could be done in any situation, even in times like this. She scoured the area around her for any unique landmarks that she could remember and could give her a sense of location.

Nothing but dead trees and white as far as she could see. There had to be something, so she looked around again. As she watched, she noticed a very peculiarly shaped tree. Even through the dense snow, Rarity could make out the mangled trunk bent at unnatural angles; she swore her mind must have been playing tricks on her, because it looked as though it was swaying like a snake. The hypnotic bends and curves spread upward out of the tree. She had to be hallucinating. She blinked the white out of her eyes and wiped her face with a boot to get the snow off her eyelashes, but that had the opposite of the desired effect.

When she opened her eyes again, a pair of ghostly eyes were staring into hers. She recoiled with a yelp and slipped in the snow. A phantom had appeared in front of her. The faint outline of the being was slightly taller than she, and the more she focused on it, the clearer the phantom’s form became.

It was a unicorn with crystal blue eyes.

Rarity screamed and pushed off the ground. She fell onto her back and fought to get up, but she only managed to slip around and kick up more snow.

“Miss. You need my help.”

Rarity stopped her screaming and looked up at the ghost before her, but her breathing remained rapid. The unicorn of the mountain, just like the one the lodge owner had told of in the fable of the mountain and its never-ending storm.. He was real!

“What - I beg your pardon?”

The see-through unicorn lowered his head, and his eyes, the most visible part of the clear pony, locked onto hers. “You are lost. You won’t survive your trek back down the mountain. You need my help, or it will get you.”

Very faintly, Rainbow’s voice could be heard over the wind. “Rarity, hang on. I’m coming!”

Rarity didn’t take her eyes off of the unicorn. The unicorn’s face was as cold as the snow. No smile warmed his face, and his eyes were distant and piercing and gouged Rarity like sharpened icicles. He looked down at her from his snout.

She couldn’t look away from the ghostly unicorn. “Rainbow, over here!” She put her front hooves underneath and pushed herself up out of the snow. “Who… Pardon me, but who are you?”

“My name is Astral. Astral Body,” said the unicorn in a deep, soft voice. “You need my help.”

“Um, nice to meet you, Astral. I’m Rarity. And--” Rarity took a moment to realize there was a possibility that she was either talking to a ghost or she had hit her head harder than she thought. “--my friend and I are lost. Could you help us?”

The being nodded. “Yes, but you can’t go down now. You’ll need shelter.”

“Rarity? Rarity! There you are!” Rainbow came bounding around the tree that had stopped Rarity in her roll down the hill. “Rarity, I heard you scream. Are you al--” She stopped as she saw the unicorn. She jumped back and shrieked, “Rarity, look out! There’s something next to you!”

Rainbow lunged at Astral, but the thick layer of snow slowed her down long enough for Rarity to jump in front of her. “Wait, Rainbow, he’s here to help us!”

“What do you mean!?”

The unicorn stepped around Rarity. “You’ll both need my help. Come, I know where we can--”

There was that roar again, the same one that Rarity heard before, but this time it overpowered the wind. It was louder, clearer, and closer.

The unicorn looked in the direction of the sound. His eyes opened a bit wider and his lips tightened. “Come,” he said, his voice more tense. “We must get to shelter, now.” He turned around and walked at a brisk pace, leaving behind quickly fading hoofprints.

Rainbow leaned against Rarity and whispered into her ear, just loud enough to be heard over the wind, “I don’t know if we can trust that thing.”

“I understand, but what other choice do we have?”

The two followed the ghost with the hoofprints deeper into the white.

Comments

[Blissey1]

...so at first I thought the title was "winds of wintercest" and I thought this was a completely different type of story...

[Mal Masque]

Oooh, the tension builds. The Official likes... Curious to see where this goes, especially with this looming threat of some unknown beast. Are you planning on using a frost-bitten beast of myth or one of your own concoction? Can't wait to see where this goes.

[Lost_Marbles]

6895725
You shall see. *rubs hands together* Very, very soon.

[Grey Wolf]

Hmmm, INTERESTING! I shall read this whole fic! Oh, and you have my like already