Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Thy Home

Barren. That was really the only way Twilight could describe it. Cold, sure, dark at times, but that was all superfluous. It was desolate. It was true isolation. She understood a little more, perhaps hated a little more too.

It was weird to breathe there. Her spells had usually been filters of some kind, the one she was using there was different. She was tempted to remove it, just to feel herself suffocate for a moment. To understand what it was like, for just a second. She didn't, though. She told herself it was because she didn't have the time for it. The truth, she knew, was that maybe she didn't want to know. Maybe it was best that way.

Her horn shone as she carved the rune deep into the grey, dusty soil, one of many others she was there to plant. All her calculations repeating in her memory as her mind frantically went over them again, trying one last time to make sure there was no mistake in them. It wasn't going to change anything, but she couldn't stop herself from doing it.

If everything went right, what she was doing would be useless. If everything continued to go right, it might remain useless forever. But things, in her recent past, had shown themselves quite prone to going everything but right. And even if she never needed it, an unused net was still better than nothing at all.

She walked forward a few hundred steps, in silence, and repeated her motions. It would take a while to get it all set up, and a while again to do it again. One last trip to the other side, one that hopefully would go better than the previous one. She'd learned a few things at least, she could probably manage it. She could hope it wouldn't be expected.

It was a kind of foolish plan. It was supposed to be, it was meant as their last, somewhat desperate card to play if everything else went wrong. It wasn't something she was even sure could actually be done, she feared simply attempting it could have sapped her dry without it being enough. It would leave her a bit drained just to set it up, in truth, but nothing sleep wouldn't fix, and she still had time. Carved another rune, she turned briefly back to stare at the trail of hoofprints she'd left. It should have felt different. It should have happened under different circumstances. No point in feeling bothered by that then though.

She wondered if she would find something there. She should have asked in advance. She wondered if she wanted to find something, if something was there to find, if it would have been right to find it, if the one who'd left it there wanted it found. She wondered a lot of things. Most of them would go unanswered, and maybe that was for the best.

She wondered if that plan had even a chance of working, with all that could go wrong. That, she hoped, would also go unanswered. Things, she hoped, would get resolved before it became relevant. She had increasingly little faith that would be the case. She looked up for a moment at the starry sky, clearer there than she'd ever seen it, and she sighed. Another rune down, carved into the cold and lifeless grey surface, among the dust and rocks of the desolate plain she walked.

Comments

[Speckle]

Oh dear....