Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Deelayn

Cozy held her breath and pushed her wings to beat faster, her legs to move quicker. She wasn't sure why she'd done what she had, only that there was no going back at that point. No going back alive at least.

Were they still on her tracks? Did they know where she was going? Were they going to follow her? Could they swim faster than her? The answer to the last one was yes, obviously, though they would need to take off their armour like she had discarded her bag. They had tracked her somehow. Could they still do it?

Where was she going? Was there even anything to find? She could feel oxygen running out, for as deep a breath as she'd taken it could still only last her so long. Her vision growing foggy, her body kept awake mostly through whatever chemicals her panic and instincts were unleashing into her.

There was something. She was going up again. She vaguely recalled passing through a hole, somewhere deeper down, too deep to see properly. Light, maybe. She couldn't tell, she wasn't awake enough to tell. It was easier to swim upwards, to let her body drift higher. Some water got into her nose, into her lungs. There was something. She couldn't tell what. She wasn't aware enough to care anymore, and it was all she had to go towards.

Cozy awoke, sputtering and spitting, a burning pain in her airways as she coughed water up and out. Her eyes were wide open, and felt as tired and dry as after a night with barely any sleep. Her coat was drenched, her curles ruined, her feathers dripping and cold. She was shivering, shaking, her head spinning, her breath fast and heavy and every inhale hurt and every exhale brought up more water. She was awake. Alive. Alone.

She looked around. A separate room in the cave system, connected through the body of water she'd swum through. The entrance, if it could be called that, was behind her, seeming no more than a wide puddle if looked at from that angle, hiding the depth of the water beneath it and the lengths the tunnels below stretched for.

What was on the other side caught and held her attention far more. She was not the first to come there, and whoever else had gotten there first hadn't done so all that long before. In front of her, all around a chamber about the size of a rather spacious room, was... something. She wasn't sure what it was. Tables neatly placed near the walls with things on them she didn't recognise, cabinets between them, and more tables with more things in the middle of the room, and papers and beakers and jewels and all sorts of other things. It was... It was a laboratory, if Cozy had to guess.

She looked behind herself, down into the water. No one was coming. They would have already. She'd lost them. She turned to the laboratory.

Comments

[Speckle]

I have this funny feeling that Cozy will be a problem in the future...

[Saix]

Well, shit, she found Stella's laboratory. This is going to end badly.