Teros

The sun rose into the sky slowly, like a great amber torch casting its flame across the horizon.  Its warm rays tickled Cadance's eyelids, causing the princess to twitch and stir.  Stretching her jaw with a gaping yawn, she flexed her limbs and rose up from the grass.

She suddenly shivered.  Her body was damp from the thin blanket of dew she had slept on, most of the nightly moisture clinging to her thin pink fur like a cool coat of honey.  Cadance blinked, looked around the immediate area, and shook herself like a dog.  While she wasn't entirely soaked and the act did little to rid her coat of its watery sheen, the exercise was enough to jolt her awake.  She breathed deep the sweet morning air, letting it all out with a content sigh.

With the sunlight brought by the dawn, Cadance could now get a clear view of the valley before her.  Stepping forward to the steep green slope of the hill she stood on, the princess gazed in awe at the grand expanse before her.  On either side of her, mountainous granite walls rose imposingly into the sky, capped with drifts of snow and ice that formed miniature glaciers in the tiny pockets of the range's peaks.  The rocky cliffs grew more gentle and moderate as Cadance's eyes drew lower, to where smooth piles of rubble and debris were carved from the immaculate surfaces of the mountain faces.  The princess could trace each landslide and avalanche from hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the steep earthy slides acting like gargantuan history books.

The forest from which Cadance had escaped from the previous night grew in earnest on and around the hill upon which the princess stood, but shriveled and died upon the ragged cliffs beyond.  Further into the valley, Cadance saw many shades of green, from the wild grasses that painted the basin to the shrubs and bushes that dotted the crags.  From where Cadance stood, the vegetation appeared to be no more than moss on a rock, save for the few proud pines that reached like desperate hooves for the peaks of the snowy ridges.

Cadance finished gathering her few belongings into her saddle bag.  Though she was lightly packed, the rosy canvas of the thing was starting to sag, its stitches tearing as if they bore some deceptively heavy weight.  The princess felt something solid and smooth in the large pocket beneath her bandaged wing, hissing under her breath as the joint heated up as if it were being heated over a campfire.  Shaking her head, she rose a dirty pink hoof with several colored hairbands wrapped around it.  Each was wet, ragged, and worn, save for a thick violet one above all the others.  With a low sigh, she levitated a frayed orange band from her hoof and, using her magic, tied it into her mane to form a long ponytail.  The princess reached behind her head and swatted the bundle of her mane for good measure, then trotted swiftly to the edge of the hill and began her descent.

The sun finally crested fully above the snow-capped giants to her left.  Cadance mentally checked off the long, slender shadow to her right, confirming that she was indeed still headed in the correct direction after relying solely on her compass and the twisted paths in the forest.  She took careful, measured steps down the steep inclination, each hoof planted firmly as to not slip on the dew that coated both the grass and her hooves.  As the slope began to taper and her cautious tread grew into a more casual trot, Cadance gave a lethargic glance back at her wings.  Her half-lidded eyes filled with tempered disdain as she lifted her left wing to look at her saddle bag.

She reached the bottom of the hill easily enough.  The land stretched before her like a green and grey canvas, perturbed only by the towering chunks of white marble that stabbed through the surface of the earth like immaculate stone swords.  Cadance had counted easily fifteen during her descent, but now that she too stood at the base of the valley, she could barely see them over the gently rising hills that rolled along the length of the place like grassy waves.

The trek through the valley was a slow one.  Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours as Cadance kept her eyes trained on her shadow, as if she expected it to escape.  The weight of her saddle bag had her constantly readjusting herself, and the princess felt the familiar burning sensation under her left wing with every step.  Even so, she pressed her feathery limb tightly over the smooth object at her side, clutching closely it like a child would a stuffed doll.

Cadance began to feel the scale of the basin as she passed a line of chest-high bushes, which she had previously thought were tiny shrubs when viewing them from the top of the hill.  The grand expanse reminded her of the flat, stretching plains that surrounded her home, and she wondered if anypony else had ever settled here, or even set hoof here.  The wide walls of mountains were certainly nothing like anypony from the singular spire of Canterlot had ever seen before, and Cadance suspected few ponies would expect to find such a hidden paradise in what many would consider a rugged, unforgiving scar upon the earth.

The thought of paradise in a frozen wasteland made her snicker to herself.  The giggles bled into a sigh, and she swallowed a lump in her throat as her ears filled with the sound of flowing water.  Cadance pushed herself through a thick wall of bushes to reveal a river.  A beach of tan and brown pebbles stretched to each side, but the water itself was a chalky white.

The princess sighed gratefully, kneeling down and stripping herself of her saddle bag.  Immediately, a cool relief spread through her wing, filling Cadance with the urge to leap into the skies and fly loops around the beach.

One look at the tattered rosy bag and her ever-shrinking shadow killed that desire.  Cadance groaned, struggling to also dispel the wish to abandon her bags here and take wing in the opposite direction.

Instead, she levitated her saddle bag closer and slowly set it down.  The spell was simple enough, though the princess felt a familiar heat settling itself in her horn.  She put her hooves around the flap of the pocket filled with something soft, and reached inside with her magic.  The baby blue glow retrieved several things: a small patchwork blanket, a glossy brass compass, a crystalline jar, and a few flowers gathered in the forest.  Several things remained in the pocket, which Cadance hastily closed as she expertly lay out the blanket and brought the flowers to her lips simultaneously.

She relished in the taste of something—anything—that wasn't grass.  What few flowers she'd found in the forest were inedible for the most part, and the ones that she'd gathered for later consumption were few and far between.  If she'd been any other pony, literally living off the land wouldn't be a problem, but royal habits died hard.

Cadance chewed and savored each petal and stem.  She stood up and walked towards the river, her crystal canteen hovering alongside her in a haze of blue magic.  The princess peered into the river, wondering what was in it that would leave it looking like a stream of watered down milk.  She shrugged, popped the top off of the jar and filled it to the brim with the chalky water.

As soon as the cap was on again, she shook the jar vigorously in the air, until it glowed with a deep red hue.  In a brief flicker, the color was gone, and Cadance uncapped the canteen again and took a long drink of clear water.  With a smirk, the princess capped it again and walked back across the pebbles to where her blanket lay spread out.

Cadance lay down on the thin fabric and picked up her compass.  It was a large instrument, with a brass cover similar to a pocket watch.  The princess flipped it open, and watched—mesmerized—as the silver needle spun wildly between the ends of a six-pointed star.

The compass itself was the bottom half of the device, but Cadance's attention quickly turned to the top.  A perfect reflection of herself stared back, just beyond the barrier of a crystal clear mirror.  A blink, and she let out a long sigh.

The pony in the mirror was plagued with baggy violet eyes.  Cadance ran a hoof through her dirty mane, feeling the twigs and grass that she could plainly see in her reflection.  Her entire face was drooping, as if she hadn't slept for days.

But it was the princess's horn that dismayed her the most.  Normally vibrant and pink, it was now a lackluster white.  Its usually defined spiral was hidden beneath a thin layer of dust that clung to her like ivy.  And worst of all, Cadance realized, were the inky blotches growing like mold at the base of her horn.  The black dots had tiny tendrils extending from within, connecting them and giving each one the appearance of a miniature hole punched violently through Cadance's horn.

The princess grimaced and tilted the mirror down, so that she could only see the bottom half of her compass.  The needle still swung back and forth over the points of the star.

Cadance's eyes shifted focus from the spinning needle to the star it spun upon.  Around the image, a thick green circle was drawn, placed so that the bottom and top points of the star were poking far through the surface of it like massive spires.  The other four points protruded through the circle as well, and all six had an image tiny blue heart just past the tip.  The entire design resembled a mutated compass rose.

She tilted the entire compass slightly, her gaze making sure not to find herself in the mirror.  Instead, Cadance saw a reflection of the compass.  The entire image was the same, save for a single detail.  Within the mirror, Cadance saw that the heart tied to the bottom point—now the top point—was a bright white, and its twin on the opposite end of the star was a pitch black.

Her eyes caught something.  The needle had finally stopped moving, its red half pointing straight at the shining white heart.  Cadance smiled and closed the compass with a click.

Within minutes, her bag was packed again.  Her stomach no longer rumbling and her canteen full of clean water, Cadance set forth on hoof once more, a burning weight beneath her wing.