Risky Business

by Compass The Pegasus

Prologue

“Don’t stop!” the pegasus mare shouted, over the hard wind and snow, to the unicorn and pegasus stallion. She pointed up. “It’s just over that cliff!”

“But wait, no,” the other pegasus interjected. “We can’t get up this way without flying. It’s too steep here, we have to find wherever we came from.”

“This is where we came from. It’s a lot easier coming down than it is climbing up” She looked back at the unicorn. “Do we have long?”

“Minutes,” the unicorn answered, trying her best to keep up with the other two. “That’s all I can buy you, without paralyzing myself.”

“Did you hear her, Soren? She can’t use the spell again. I don’t want to get any of us killed. All of this means nothing if you die!”

“Fine!”

As they ascended the steep cliffside, they came across a sizable nook where they could take a second to rest, sheltered from the sharp winds. The stallion peered over the edge, down to where they had come from, but their tracks were no longer visible. For a few moments, the wind slowed down significantly, the snow becoming a simple flurry; a pause in the storm.

“Woah, are you seeing this?” the stallion said to the others.

“Yeah, guys,” the pegasus mare said, “this is our chance. We don’t have the time to climb the rest. Let’s fly.” She received two nods in response.

The two pegasi then stood on either side of the unicorn, and took flight with her held between them. As they gained height and neared the overhang of the cliff, they could see the roof of the structure emerge, but just as they approached the edge the winds changed, and they were slammed into the wall, and plummeted back toward the ground. The deep snow softened their landing, but it still knocked the breath out of all three ponies. As they shook off the impact, the ground rumbled, causing a significant amount of snow to fall off the top of the cliff and create a small bank of snow between themselves and the tundra.

“It broke free…” the unicorn mumbled, her body shrinking with fear. At that moment, they heard it. The guttural roar of the beast. It echoed through the plane, and seemed to pierce through their bodies and deliver a feeling of terror directly into their hearts.

“And now it knows where we are!” the unicorn whined.

Before any of them could make a move, the snowbank exploded into a flurry of fine powder, temporarily blinding all three ponies. They didn’t recover in time to dodge the gargantuan, clawed paw of the beast swiping at them. The two pegasi were lucky enough to be hit by the padded portion of the paw and be knocked down, but the unicorn was not nearly as lucky. The last they saw of her was a dark form thrown out of sight; they did not hear or see her land.

The two pegasi rolled around, their bodies aching. The beast roared once again, rearing onto its hind legs, and then slammed its front paws into the snow as it finished, shaking the earth. Even though they were a distance away, the two pegasi were thrown off balance and knocked over once again. The beast stepped backward, searching for its prey. It turned its head around, cocked its ears, sniffed the air, but it had lost them in the storm.

The pegasus mare managed to regain her bearings first, and frantically looked around - the stallion was with her, and the beast was far behind. Her eyes locked onto a patch of snow, splattered with red. She looked over herself and found that, while she was scratched up and sore, she didn’t seem to have any major cuts.

The stallion groaned. “Hey, shhh,” she urged him, as he writhed in the snow. “Don’t move, and try to stay quiet.” He nodded. She asked him, “Are you hurt?”

He looked himself over and also found no major damage. “Feel like I played chicken with a freight train, and lost, but I can walk,” he answered.

“Look,” she pointed at the splotch of red. “It’s not mine. It’s not yours. She’s hurt badly, we gotta move now.”

The beast bent down and snorted, spewing a cloud of superheated steam from its nostrils before breathing deep, smelling the air. It smelled blood.

“He’s got her scent! What do we do now?” she cried, falling over and clutching her head in her hooves. The beast, now approaching them, sniffed near the patch of bloody snow. It was close - its eyes burned a deep orange, as if the sun itself burned within its sockets. It trudged over to a nearby hill looking over the tundra.

Just then there was a faint blue spark in the distance, under the cover of the rocky cliff.

“I found her!” The mare screamed, pointing to the nearby cliff face. “She’s right there!” This caught the attention of the beast, who looked over at them, but it had also noticed the blue spark in the distance. It snarled as it ignored them, and began to stalk towards the cliff.

“River! I have an idea!” the stallion screamed, through the howling wind. “On my call, lead it away from her.”

“W-What?” the mare sputtered. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Just - Throw a rock at him, or something, okay?”

“What!?”

“Just do it!” he commanded.

“Roger Roger!” she screamed back at him, looking back over to where the spark had been, not twenty meters away. Any details beyond that were obstructed by the heavy snowfall. Their attention was almost immediately stolen by the third roar that rattled their very cores once again.

Soren made a break towards the cliffside, running up and over the hill between them. He tried to use his wings to help give some extra leverage while climbing, but his fatigued muscles got the better of him. But when he managed to push through enough to just get himself out of striking range of the beast, he screamed.

“Now!”

Almost instantly, a loud scream was heard, and a stone cracked against the skull of the beast. Enraged, it turned its attention toward the pegasus mare and snarled while it beat the ground with its paws, throwing the stallion off balance once more. Within seconds, the beast charged at her, as she tried her best to evade.

Regaining his bearings, the stallion ran over to where the unicorn had been launched. He saw deep tracks through the snow, as she must have tumbled and slid over that way, and eventually a red smear led to a pony. She was busy tightening a makeshift bandage around a series of cuts on her leg when she noticed him. She shivered, while steam rose from the wound.

“You saw it? My spark?” she asked, dizzily, as she noticed him approach. He quickly scanned over her body.

“Oh, god,” the pegasus said. “You’ve lost a lot of… Here, let’s get you on my back. We gotta go now.”

The unicorn spoke, between shallow breaths, “But what about th-”

“It’s not worth letting my friend die. Stop talking, there’s not much time now.” He reached down to lift her up, but she pushed him away.

”No!” she shouted. “Just running won’t work.”

“Seriously, we don’t have time for this!” he screamed, standing up and moving over to her to try and pick her up again. For a second time, she resisted enough for him to stop on his own. Frustrated, he growled, “What the hell? You're gonna just sit here?”

“Let him charge…” - a shuddering breath. “I’ll blast him again… with everything I got this time. While he and I are both paralyzed, pick me up, and get me out of here, alright?”

He looked her straight in the eye. “You’re serious.”

“Soren, it’s our only chance. We can’t… Give it up now. Especially after everything we’ve done to get here.”

“But-”

“It'll work, okay!" the unicorn cried. "It will work. You just have to trust me, like I... trust you..”

Soren stared at her for a moment, then just shook his head and chuckled. “I take it back, I was wrong about you. But I swear, you better be alive by the end of this.” he warned, turning away and running back into the blizzard.

“Hey, wait! That’s on you, you better not let me die out here. Soren? Soren!”

Author's Note:

Hello! I hope you've enjoyed. Please feel free to leave a like and comment if you did.
See you next chapter!

Comments

[Mix-up]

Interesting prologue you added it certainly help to add a level of mystery and suspense to the story on what's going on

[Compass The Pegasus]

11160009
Glad you liked it!