Teros

Her lilac eyes shot open.  Cadance gasped, lurching with a sudden fit of nausea, and stumbled to her hooves.  She panted, her breaths labored and long, as she more or less tripped her way towards the Crystal Heart, which lay motionless on the ground.  The late afternoon air was chilling—frigid even—but she didn't pay it any notice.

The princess collapsed in a heap next to the stone, landing flat on her bandaged wing.  Her breath came with a stutter for an instant, but she was far too exhausted to register the pain.  Instead, she lifted a hoof and gracelessly pawed at the Crystal Heart like a cat would a ball of yarn.  She batted its edges so that it spun slowly around, and Cadance let out a joyous whimper when she realized that all of its faces were a perfect shade of blue.

She reached out and held the crystal to her chest, curling her body around it like a stuffed animal.  Moisture built up in the corners of her eyes as she hugged the Crystal Heart tighter, sniffling.  A tiny smile pulled on the edges of her cheeks.

The princess lay there for hours.  As the afternoon sun faded from yellow to orange to red, bands of pink clouds stretched across the sky like grand atmospheric strokes of paint.  Cadance rolled over, still hugging the stone, and gazed up lazily into the heavens as they danced across the ceiling of the valley.  Stars twinkled bravely into existence as the orange sky grew darker, darker, and was eventually extinguished like a dying candle.  Just as the sun dropped over the edge of the world, Cadance noticed a front of bulbous clouds rolling their way over the valley.

The entirety of the area was growing colder by the minute, but Cadance remained motionless on the grass.  The trickle of water from a nearby stream was the only percussion to the night.  The princess scanned the sky with her eyes, finding nothing but a black expanse in the base of the storm front.  With a sigh, she stretched, let loose a gaping yawn, and pushed herself up from the ground with a single beat of her wings.

Still holding the Crystal Heart in her forelimbs, Cadance glided silently up the slope of the grassy hill, staying no more than a meter above the ground.  She quickly found her rosy saddle bag lying in at the top, and she surmised that she must have rolled down the hill soon after falling unconscious.  She landed, gave the Crystal Heart one last glance, and packed it carefully into the empty pocket in her bag.

She placed the bag on her back, faced forwards once more, and—flapping her wings once for good measure—shot into the air like a pink and purple arrow.

Her ponytail whipped around behind her, tickling the base of her neck.  Cadance relished at the sensation, at the wind whistling in her ears, at the sight of the valley's basin stretching out before her like an open page.  Her gaze caught the giant marble spires as she flew over them, and she marveled at how they seemed to glow even with such little light.

The princess gave an annoyed glance skyward.  The clouds drifted lethargically above, their outlines barely illuminated by the glow of the moon and stars beyond.  Cadance turned her head to look at her saddlebag, and she reached back with a hoof to nudge it.  Nodding at its security, she steadily rose in altitude as her wing beats grew stronger and longer.  The princess ascended high above the valley until the once giant stones penetrating the earth were nothing but minuscule pebbles in her eyes.

With a final thrust, she broke through the base of the clouds and into a damp abyss.