The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Crates

As the week wore on, Starlight Glimmer continued her recovery. Each day, she used her horn as little as possible, making do with hoofwork and simply doing nothing instead. The filly reattached her horseshoes, finished drying her saddlebags, and flatly refused to take a bath. On days when it was dry out, she left the cave, carefully cutting grass and spreading it in the cave to dry into hay. On days when it was raining, she hunkered under her blanket, reading Sosa's journal for the umpteenth time.

She kept herself warm, and before long her nose stopped running. She made sure to stay active, not willing to let herself get out of shape while she was down. And before long, she decided it was finally time to gear up and do something.

The day she decided that, it was raining.

Starlight pouted at the entrance to the cave, empty saddlebags slung over her little back. Outside, a gale was blowing, forcing her to stand back lest the rain intrude too far. She curled a lip, stuck out her tongue, turned around, and decided to explore the old camp instead.

Her horn felt fresh as she lit it, and the tingle of pleasure from finally being able to use magic comfortably almost succeeded in dispelling her dour mood. This was the first time she had returned to the camp since discovering it, not wanting to push herself while she was still on the mend and secretly fearing what she might find. But excitement was there too, and it forced her steps to quicken as she drew deeper into the cave.

She reached the camp, gaze immediately drawn to the sealed wooden crates she had observed before. Tossing aside her bags, she struggled to climb on top of one, jumping to reach the edge far above her natural height. Once there, she inspected the top in greater detail.

It was bound shut by numerous nails, and a quick telekinetic probe revealed nothing for her to easily grab to force it open. She could probably manage by lifting the lid from within, but was already unenvious of the amount of effort that would take. She paused, thinking... and then closed her eyes.

Starlight extinguished her light spell, but the shimmer on her horn remained. Carefully, struggling for precision, she expanded her telekinetic field until it surrounded the box... and everything in it. Tightening her grip only the barest amount, she slid her field left and right, feeling small amounts of drag as it passed the solids by. Over a minute, she repeated the process, gradually building in her head a map of where the resistance was.

Eventually, she stopped, and proceeded to sit in pitch darkness, unmoving as cool cave air filled her lungs. Whatever was in the box was heavy, long, pointy, and numerous in quantity. Her mind couldn't place what that could be, but she was relatively sure it wasn't food, rope, a tent or anything else useful to her.

She abandoned the crate, yet smirked in satisfaction; scanning it had been surprisingly effortless. Perhaps it was because she was fresh, but the difficulty had all been in imagining what she was feeling. Her horn pulsed on her forehead, good as new.

Licking her lips, Starlight chose another crate to scan. This time, she identified the contents fairly quickly: bottles, probably glass. She turned up her nose; water was good enough for anypony.

Scanning was definitely easier than forcing the crates open, Starlight thought to herself as she chose another and covered it in her field. Briefly, her eyes widened in disgust at what she felt: the contents of the box were coiled in all sorts of chaotic directions and moved when she felt them, nearly a centimeter thick. She quickly realized it was a rope, and wiped a hoof across her brow.

Starlight had brought a rope when she first set out. It had been useful, but was lost fairly early on in the caves after she misjudged the slope of an incline at the base of a ledge and tumbled far out of reach before she could untie it. This was something she needed to get.

Squinting, she hardened her telekinesis under the lid and shoved... and let out a frustrated growl as the crate flew upwards entirely, coming back down with a wooden clunk and nearly flattening her. She wished she knew how to teleport. Accomplished mages would be able to get inside the box, then push from there. But Starlight had to make do with her filly magic, and that meant doing it the hard way.

She set the box aside, deciding that no smart pony would use packaging so hard to open without leaving a tool for it laying around. Relighting her horn, Starlight returned to poking around the room and its low stacks of crates, searching for anything that might prove useful.

Her search turned up no real tools, but she did find a jagged shard of rock that might serve as an impromptu crowbar. Carrying it in her mouth back to the offending crate, she kicked and shoved the thing until it rolled over, leaving the nailed top on one side. Starlight scrambled back up, hammered the rock into a seam, and pushed, uniting telekinesis and her own physical strength.

The box creaked... groaned... and gave. A crack opened up, wide enough for Starlight to shove the rock further in and use it as a lever. She worked her way down the side, rolling the box several more times as she completed the tiresome process of loosening the lid, eventually wrenching and chucking the nail-ridden thing away. The box's contents came tumbling out.

It was, as she had predicted, a rope. Starlight beamed, sitting upright and holding a length of it in her forehooves. It looked slightly frayed and was horribly tangled, but seemed thick and didn't make too many cracking noises when she touched it.

Working by the light of her horn, she knelt and began trying to sort out the first knot... only for the thing to immediately snap in her hooves. She blinked in surprise. Selecting a random portion of the rope elsewhere, she gave an experimental tug, only to be met with the same result.

Starlight groaned loudly, kicking the box before throwing the rope aside and flopping down with her chin on the floor. It was cold, but her frustration needed to be cooled. All that work for a broken rope? At least it hadn't snapped when she was trying to use it. Her heart briefly slowed as she imagined falling down an endless cliff into a pit of darkness, a frayed rope end trailing meters above her...

She gulped, and immediately found that her frustration had been replaced with tears. She wasn't exactly sure why, but lay there and let them come. The rope must have been old. Any food Sosa had brought would be old, too. There was probably nothing of use in his camp, after all.

After several minutes of feeling cold and tired, Starlight scooted forward and pushed herself to her hooves. The cave did still go further, after all. Maybe she would see if there was anything interesting that way.

---

The passage, to Starlight's complete and utter surprise, led to more caves. And those to more caves still. She followed the river, dubiously eyeing the passages that broke off from her shelf every now and then. She was used to narrow, shifty tunnels, but was without her food and the river was her only method of reliably backtracking.

The river itself rushed at a fairly steep slant, leading Starlight to wonder just how deep it went. A shelf similar to the one on which she walked sprang out of the cave wall on the opposite side, and she could see tunnels branching off there, too. She could have formed a bridge out of manacrystal and crossed, had she wanted to, but that would have been pointless. So, she kept walking.

Her hoofsteps wound ever downward, twisting and spiraling to the point where Starlight swore she was directly under a point she had trodden before. With a slight twinge of nervousness, she realized she had left her saddlebags in Sosa's camp and all of her supplies even further up; if she got too hungry or tired to climb all the way out, she'd be stuck there. She wasn't hungry yet, but this amount of uphill could change that in an instant.

Starlight was almost ready to turn around when she felt a curious sensation on her cheek: the rush of wind. She sniffed; fresh air was indeed coming from somewhere ahead. Her curiosity was instantly piqued. Raising her ears and lowering her head, she charged further into the caves.

Wind this low was unusual. She had entered the cave on level with a lake. After this much altitude loss, shouldn't she be far underground? She shook her head at that line of thought; as far under the surface as the caves she had survived earlier were, they still ran through the very peaks of the mountains. Regrettably, she had no way of telling altitude as she did direction.

She rounded a turn, and realized that she didn't need her horn to see. Light was filtering in from somewhere ahead, and it illuminated the river surging forward with a furious froth. An echoing, stone-piercing roaring that had been building for some time finally completely overpowered the river, leaving little doubt as to what lay ahead. Starlight skidded to a stop around the final bend anyway, blinking furiously as her eyes adjusted to broad daylight - and the sight before her.

Comments

[Hap]

🎵 don't go chasin' waterfalls...

[Bookeater_otaku]

Herr. An empty bottle can be usefull. And she should have stillopened the other crate on case of something useful.

She could burn the road and crate to make fire and keep herself warm at night too.

[PropMaster]

Well, dry rope makes good kindling. And wood boxes can become firewood. There are new options. Still, more crate searching is in order.

[Campo]

Just now getting into this story. Been craving for another long adventure fic similar to IC's Austraeoh series.
So far, this has been pretty enjoyable, and super cool to see that it's still being updated to this day.

[BurningSkies]

Eventually, she stopped, and proceeded to sit in pitch darkness, unmoving as cool cave air filled her lungs. Whatever was in the box was heavy, long, pointy, and numerous in quantity. Her mind couldn't place what that could be, but she was relatively sure it wasn't food, rope, a tent or anything else useful to her.

The description sounds like a load of oversized nails, so maybe railroad spikes?

[Merula]

Eh, that rope looked at her wrong anyways

[Walrusesarecute]

I need to know why Starlight is out here