In a World of Mining

The abandoned mineshaft was quite long. Every 10 steps there was a gate which the railway passed under. At some points the railway was missing a piece, and at others the mineshaft cut open to let water pass through. It wasn’t lit by torches, so darkness swallowed the far half of it.

Trixie lay the torches down at the gates, but there was always the one step where she couldn’t see anything. After so long, she fell into water that just happened to be there.

Applejack thought Trixie had hit her head, because a large stone was positioned directly after the water hole. “Oh my- Trix, are you alright?”

“Trixie thinks she is...” the magic pony slurred.

Applejack helped Trixie up from the water. Trixie placed a torch into the gate she had failed to reach before. Then she realised that she was wet. Normally a pony would instantly know if they were wet.

Trixie untied her cape and held it up. The stars on her cape were bleeding towards the sides. She started to cry.

“Nooooooo!! Not the Great and Powerful Trixie’s cape! Nooooooooooooooo!!” she wailed.

“Stop worryin’ about your cape Trixie, ah’m sure ah can dry it later.” sighed Applejack.

“But- this cape- it’s been a part of me for so long... and now it’s- ruined...”

“Ain’t ya hearin’ what ah’m sayin’ Trix? Ah don’t wanna have to drag you to the other side of the railway.”

Trixie, still crying, got up and followed Applejack. She left her cape lying near the water hole.

You already know that darkness had a hold of the mineshaft, right? Well, soon after Trixie losing her cape, the railway split into two. One railway went straight ahead and stopped, the other went to the left, and it was too dark to see much down that way.

“Trix, you finish off the straight railway. Ah’ll go start explorin’ this one.”

Applejack didn’t stay to see Trixie’s response. She started down the new railway, the lighting darker than in the main room... pitch black even.

Suddenly Applejack saw a fire in the distance. Normally fires would eventually burn out and give off light, but this fire did neither of those things. It just sat there.

Applejack carefully approached the fire, continuing to place torches down. All at once the walls of the mineshaft were too far away from the walkway, and where the walls weren’t there was a rather deep hole, so Applejack started putting the torches on the ground.

Now that she was closer to the fire, she could see a lot more. The fire was inside a purple cage, and hovering above the fire was an image of a spider.

Applejack reached into her satchel, pulled out her diamond pickaxe and was about to mine the fiery block when she heard clicking. It sounded like spiders... giant spiders, and lots of them. She started to back away from the cage towards the main railway, then all of a sudden spiders dropped from the ceiling and slowly crawled towards her.

She was scared beyond belief. She ran out of the room, grabbed Trixie, and headed for the entrance to the maze.

“What is the meaning of thi-” Trixie growled, but shut up when she saw the spiders.

The spiders did not stop for anything. Not even the water hole. Heck, they didn’t even need to see where they were going. They jumped over their obstacles as if they were remote-controlled planes.

Applejack was careful to pick up Trixie’s wet cape as well before jumping down into the maze and running off. The spiders stopped at the stairs, and didn’t go down into the maze- probably because of the glitch. All they did was watch as the farm pony and the magician escaped unharmed.

Applejack finally reached the point where the maze joined up with Trixie’s underground home. She dropped Trixie and Trixie’s cape, and flopped onto the ground, exhausted all that running whilst carrying everything.

Trixie was still speechless, but she was sensing a pattern. If Applejack was putting her in danger all of the time, that might mean that Applejack has evil intentions for her and only wants to kill her when the time is right.

Trixie shook the idea away. Another one of her exaggerations, she thought.

“Trixie thinks Applejack needs practice with the sword.”

Applejack took a big breath before speaking again. “Ya might be right Trix. Ah’m terrible at fightin’. All ah know is how to kick.”