Exiled From Equestria

Night is beginning to fall. A map surrounded by a magenta glow levitates in Twilight’s vision. She stops her slow trot. Midnight Blaze and Shooting Star, who trot behind her, walk up next to her and look at the map as well.

“I say we’ve made great progress fa the day,” Shooting Star comments. Midnight Blaze closes her eyes and nods. “We’re way past Redwood, that’s fa sure.”

Twilight looks up from the map. She gazes across the desert landscape, wondering how a forest could fade into a desert just like that. But, she had never been in a desert, so who is she to wonder?

“Where are we going to sleep?” the lavender pony eventually asks.

“Um, tha tents?” Shooting asks likes it’s the obvious answer.

“But even though it’s fairly hot right now, it will get much too cold and windy at night. Won’t the wind easily blow the tent off the sand?”

Midnight Blaze stares at Twilight’s horn. “What about your magic?”

“My magic?” Twilight stares at her own horn for a few moments before her face lights up with the excitement of an old spell she had learned.

Twilight bends down and aims her horn at the sandy hill across from hers. Suddenly, a huge chunk of sand levitates out in the center, forming the shape of a large soup can. Sand starts pouring into it, so she uses another spell that hardens the edges of the large hole. When she is done, she smiles delightfully and races over to her finished work, Midnight Blaze and Shooting Star following.

Celestia’s sun is only an inch above the horizon. With the last orange glows of their first traveling day, the three ponies look at the wide and deep hole dug into the ground.

Luna’s moon rises fully off the horizon, completely setting the sun. Twilight wonders who is raising the sun and moon, since the last she saw of the royal sisters was not a very good time.

Twilight hops into the large hole that is two ponies deep and five ponies wide. Her friends jump in with her. Inside, the wind is muted and sand isn’t blowing into their eyes.

“There is just enough room for us to fit in, but we can’t set up our tents in here.”

“That’s okay, Midnight. The hole itself is a tent. We can just sleep in our blankets tonight,” Twilight replies.

“I dunno, Twilight. Isn’t it gonna be a cold night?”

“What if we set up a fire?” Midnight Blaze suggests while wiggling off her two saddlebags onto her section of the hole. Shooting Star nods while opening one of her saddlebags with her wing and reaches inside. She pulls out flint and steel.

“But where are we supposed to get the wood?” Twilight asks. Shooting Star waves a hoof dismissively and skyrockets into the air with all the leftover energy she has left.

Midnight Blaze and Twilight Sparkle stare at each other in the quiet dark.

“It’s too bad you guys had to spend all your bits on the supplies. What if we run out of food?”

“Oh, trust me, I’m an excellent survivor. If we need food, I’ll find food.” Midnight points to Twilight’s horn again. “Plus we’ve got magic on our side.”

“Midnight, you have magic too,” Twilight says. She feels uncomfortable when ponies point out how powerful her magic is, even though she learned when Trixie was in town that it can be okay to show off talent some times.

The yellow unicorn shakes her head. “Not like yours. Besides, your not making anypony jealous, so you have no reason to be so modest about it.”

“I’m back!” Shooting Star calls as she enters the hole with a large pile of woods tucked between her forelegs and chest. She spills them onto the center of the room and grabs her flint and steel. Two minutes later, they have a roaring fire half as big as the average pony.

None of the three ponies have eaten since they left that morning. Twilight's stomach growled. She slipped her own saddlebags off her back and sat down. In the dim, changing light of the fire, she noses into her bag. Inside lay three apples, a water bottle, two bags of oats, a blanket, four boots, and a jacket. She shivers and pulls out her jacket with her teeth, slipping it over her head and through her hooves. Then she uses her magic to pull out the blanket, an apple, and the water bottle. She eats the apple up to core, levitates the cap off her bottle of water and takes a small sip, levitates the apple core onto the desert sand outside, levitates the cap back on her water bottle and places it back in her bag, then lays the blanket on her hind legs and belly, leaving her head and forelegs out in the open.

She turns to Shooting Star and Midnight Blaze who are munching on two bags of oats and chatting quietly. Twilight snuggles up in the fuzzy blanket. She peacefully closes her eyes...

"AGH!" Midnight Blaze screams. Twilight and Shooting jerk their heads to the unicorn who is galloping around the room frantically.

"Midnight, what is ya doin'?" Shooting Star asks with her Manehattan accent. Her eyes move from left to right in time with her friend. "Twilight is tryins ta sleep."

"I felt something scamper on my back. I think it was a mouse!"

"Well stops ya panicin' because that ain't helpin' no pony." Midnight skids to a halt at the sound of Shooting Star's annoyance. "We're in the middles of a desert. Why would there be rodents?"

Twilight narrows her eyes. The room seems to be rat-free. She sighs and leaves the comfort of her blanket to examine the situation. The lavender pony expects to see nothing when she lifts up Midnight Blaze's blanket. She is mistaken when, in fact, a rat turns to her with beady green eyes and hisses. Twilight screams and starts running around the room, causing Midnight Blaze to panic again while Shooting Star face-hoofs.

The rat sneaks up behind Shooting Star and bites her back leg. The pegasus shrieks and jumps into the air by instinct to get away. While she scans the hole in the ground, the rat also sneaks up to Midnight and bites her as well. It's panic until Shooting Star watches the rat finally climb the walls of sand and run out into the desert.

"It's gone now, you two can stop screaming." Twilight and Midnight flop down next to each other. Now that they've all calmed down, Shooting and Midnight start to notice the stinging pain in their back legs where the rat bit them. They turns to look at their bites. They're is swelling and almost as big as a grape. It's not only big, but it really hurts, too.

"It bit me."

"It bit me, too."

"It bit you?"

"Yes!" Shooting Star and Midnight Blaze stretch out their back legs. Twilight gasps.

"Those don't look too good..."

***

While the three friends chat worriedly, the rat takes one last peek at the large den in the ground. Then it flees a couple of hills away where the mares can't see it. The rat's emerald eyes narrow. It smiles evilly. Suddenly, a green fire bursts from the ground around the rat. The fire shoots up like a wall, covering the rat.

Once the fire fades away into the night, the rat is longer a rat. In it's place is a pony-sized creature known as a Changeling. He has green wings and eyes, and the rest of him is pitch black, including his horn.

He only has to wait a couple seconds before a changeling twice as big as him appears at his side. "Mission accomplished?" she asks. The changeling who had shape-shifted into the rat and bit Shooting and Midnight nods. The large changeling smiles. "Those pastel fools."

Soonly, a third member of the group appears at the other side of the small changeling, also wearing an evil smile. "Everything going according to plan?"

"Yes, Discord," Queen Chrysalis replies. The two can already imagine the chaos that Twilight will go through.

Discord knows that Twilight will find her way back to Equestria, so he has to delay her. Only delay, for Twilight is a part of his plans. She needs to return to Equestria, just not yet...

Discord snaps his fingers and he's gone in a splash of sparkles. The next time he opens his eyes, he is in a cold and wet cave, just outside the town of Redwood. He is in the same place where Twilight woke up in yesterday, except he knows where he is. Just a few tail-lengths away from him lies a glowing pond of green water. He quickly disappears in the mysterious glow.

Underwater was cold as ice when Discord first found it, but with a touch of his chaotic magic, it turned as warm as a pool. It was also impossibly dark. He fixed that, too. He swims deeper and deeper until he reaches the end of the pond where it reaches straight up to the surface. It's so sudden, in fact, that if you didn't know it was there, you would think it's a dead in. But Discord knows every inch of the cave, and he certainly knows the secret room.

He breaches the surface of the room. The large room is actually the end of the tunnel. The pond fades away to a small beach on one end. Everything is cold stone, except for the beach which is wet sand. You can only find the room by swimming through the long corridor, thus meaning that no sunlight gets in. But you can see in the room the same way that you can see in the water. The secret is glowing green mushrooms. The walls of the underwater half of the cave and the room are littered with nightlight-like mushrooms.

Discord walks onto the beach. His loud steps awake his prisoner. "My, my, you are much too easy to defeat, dearest Celestia." Discord sneers.

Princess Celestia lays on the far side of the room. Chains tied to her four hoofs and the wall keep her from escaping. A thick purple collar hangs around her neck, keeping her from using her magic. Her once flowing mane is flat and messy. Her stomach growls. She slowly opens her eyes half-way, cringing in fear at the sight of her kidnapper. "Discord..." Her mouth is dry. She is very weak, but still strong inside. "Whatever you are planning...will not work..."

"The bearers of the Elements of Harmony are not all together, your sister is Nightmare Moon, and I have escaped my second stone prison. You cannot possibly tell me that my plans will not work."

Discord has only fed her one small apple in the past three days she has been trapped. Water isn't an issue since it drips off the ceiling every second. Princess Celestia's stomach rumbles. "Why are you hiding me?"

Discord only laughs. "It is all part of my secret plans." He snaps his fingers and a bowl of oats appear next to the pale pink alicorn. He expects her to grab for it in a very pathetic way. But she just glares at the draconequus. "Fine, have it your way." With another snap of his fingers, the oats turn into a pile of snakes that slither toward the princess. She backs away without showing any fear.

"Weak one second and strong the next. Your kind of nonsense isn't fun." Just like that, Discord dives back into the pool. When he does, the snakes disappear, but there is still no food.

Celestia feels weak inside. She collapses to the ground, a with the creature gone, she allows herself to cry.

***

White Tail Woods seems like a harmless forest to ponies who have only ever been there during the annual Running of the Leaves. But it’s in fact the beginning of winter; it’s cold, wet, windy, and trees are as bare as empty bowls of cereal.

The ponies shiver as they trudge through the wet leaves on the ground. Sunlight peaks through the smallest of gaps in between the trees, lighting the invisible path to Winsome Falls. Fallen branches covered in damp moss block their way.

Rainbow Dash glances up at the sky above. Clouds bump into one another, making thunder and occasionally blocking the only rays of sun they can see. Up ahead is Rarity who tries not to panic at the feeling of fresh mud and sticky leaves on her hooves.

“Everypony, we need a leader,” Rainbow Dash shouts. Her four friends turn to her with confused looks. “Twilight was always the leader of the group, but since she’s not here, somepony else has to lead us to Canterlot.”

Applejack gives a hesitant nod. “Fluttershy, Ah’m assumin’ you don’t want to?” The yellow pegasus pony hides her face behind her long pink mane and shakes her head shyly. “Right, so that leaves Rainbow, Rarity, Pinkie, and Ah.”

“Ooo! Can I do it? Can I do it? Pick me! Pick me, pick me, pick me!” Pinkie Pie waves her left foreleg in the air and bites her lip. “Pleeeeaaaase?”

“Ugh... all in favor of havin’ Pinkie as the leader?”

“FAVOR!” Pinkie Pie screams. Birds chirp and fly away. She smiles gleefully. “Don’t worry, I’m a great leader. Just follow me.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” whispers Rarity as they follow the bouncing pony through the forest. “Does she even know where she’s going?”

Rainbow Dash crosses her forelegs, hovering above the ground. “I don’t think any of you knew where we were going anyway.” Applejack grunts. No pony says much for the next hour until Pinkie suddenly stops in the middle of bouncing. Rarity, who is trotting behind her, bunks her nose on the earth pony’s shoulder.

“Ow! Pinkie, darling, why did you stop? We still have a few hours until sundown.”

“Shh!” Pinkie Pie crouches down and moves to the left sneakily, beckoning her friends to crouch down and follow her as well. They obeyed, still confused. Then they saw that they were one tail-length away from falling off a steep cliff into a deep canyon full of pointy, spiky trees. Only the Evergreen Trees have leaves of green.

Applejack stares wide-eyed. “Pinkie,” she whispers, “what the hay are you doin’? If we fall off that cliff, we could die!”

Pinkie Pie doesn’t say anything. Instead, she points a shaky hoof to a large cave at one end of the canyon. All the ponies hold their breath. Suddenly, having flown all over Equestria, Rainbow Dash recognizes the canyon.

“Pinkie Pie, why are we at Colt Canyon?”

“Colt Canyon?” Rarity repeats after Rainbow Dash. She stops tip-hoofing and pulls out her map. “Pinkie, your leading us in the wrong direction!”

“No I’m not, silly. I’m leading us west.” She smiles innocently. Rainbow Dash almost pulls her mane out.

“We’re supposed to be going north, Pinkie Pie. Not west.”

“Oh.” Pinkie Pie giggles. “Silly me!”

Rainbow Dash face-hoofs. When she smacks her hoof back on the ground, it sends a few stones bouncing down into the canyon. They hold their breath until they land in the waterfall down below with a loud smack. Everypony glares at the cyan pegasus. She blushes and laughs nervously.

“A little splash isn't gonna wake any creature.” She waves a hoof dismissively just before a loud roar reverberates through the canyon. A few birds fly away. They see nothing at first.

Then a large orange dragon slithers out of the cave. His scales shimmer gold and his eyes glare red at the five ponies who disrupted his slumber.

“Nice goin’, Rainbow!”

“Hey, Applejack, Pinkie’s the one who led us here in the first place.” Soon the two were arguing, forgetting all about the dragon making his way towards the pastel ponies.

“Stop it. There’s a dragon running towards us and you are fighting?”

Applejack looks back at the rampaging creature with a mouth five times as big as the ponies themselves. “Everypony, drop you’re saddlebags, and RUN!”

Adrenaline pumps through their blood. Everypony tears the extra weight off their sides. All the ponies scamper into the forest with the sound of dragon roars behind their backs. Rainbow Dash stops running in a clearing and spirals into the sky, free falling toward the dragon. Her friends stop running and watch the pony in horror.

“Rainbow, what are you doin’?”

“Get back here!” Applejack and Rarity call anxiously. Rainbow Dash can’t hear them over the rush of wind rushing past her ears as she flaps closer and closer to the danger. But even if she could hear them, she would keep flying.

The cyan pegasus flies two tail-lengths past his right eye. The large creature stops stomping and reaches his rough claws toward the pegasus like she is a fly. But the pony is too fast for him and does an upside-down flip to his tail and away. The dragon gets distracted and storms after her instead of her friends.

Applejack and Rarity don’t even think about what they’re doing as they run along the steep cliffside to meet up with Rainbow, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie soon following.

Sunlight pierces Rainbow Dash’s eyes. Tears fall from them from both this and the speed. But with the dragon being much bigger than her, her speed is outnumbered by size.

He runs right behind her. In a panic, she swoops above his head. But before she makes it out of reach, burning hot flames shoot from the dragon’s mouth. She is close enough that it singes her tail tip, but not enough to do any real damage. The confident and brave pegasus looks from her tail to the dragon and laughs. Her fear runs thin and she soon underestimates his power.

“You can’t catch me, filly beast!” she exclaims. This insult enrages him even further, causing hotter flames to escape him. They miss her by five tail-lengths. “Hah!”

Her fear melts away like ice on a hot day. To prove it, she soars downward, inches from the dragon’s face. She almost escapes.

Almost.

Then he swats her with his enormous claws. The blow quickly knocks her to the ground, giving her a face full of dirt. For a moment, all she can fear is pain and agony.

That’s when the dragon inhales to release a strong wave a pain. Rainbow barely turns her head to him, awaiting her death, when a sudden loop in a rope collapses over his muzzle. He snorts a large puff of smoke and reaches for the tight rope. Applejack pulls hard on the lasso as the dragon picks at it, but he’s too strong, and he scrapes it off his snout.

The dragon looks from the rope to Applejack and growls.

“Oh, no,” Applejack mutters. She turns tail on the dragon who has taken her as his new target.

When he gets to the ledge of the gorge, the dragon spreads out his wings and pushes off the ground. Applejack looks behind her shoulder at the soaring beast and gasps in horror. He breaths more fire, this time missing the farm pony by only a hoof.

“Hey, Dragon!” a voice calls out. The chaser and his victim stop running and look at Rarity who has used her unicorn magic to find a large collection of gemstones. She levitates them in a big ball and waves it in front of his face. All his attention turns to what looks like a yummy dinner. As Rarity levitates farther away, the dragon follows, and soon she leads them both into his cave.

Once they’re sure the dragon is gone and they calm down some, Rarity runs to the saddlebags. She gasps at the sight of ashes.

Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie find a gentle slop on the cliffside and slide down into the canyon. Then they all run worriedly to Rainbow Dash who is covered in bruises and scratches. Rarity would have wrinkled her nose at the feeling of dirt if she wasn't so worried about her friend.

“Rainbow, are y’all okay?” Applejack asks. Rainbow slowly lifts up her head and shakes it, spitting out dirt.

“Darling, let me help you.” Rarity offers a hoof to her friend. Rainbow Dash struggles to grab it, since the blow had knocked the wind out of her and she's still recovering. Rarity whispers, “oh dear,” and uses her magic to gently lift her from the ground to make it easier.

Rainbow balances well enough on three of her legs, but her left foreleg is numb and refuses to accept weight. She falls face-first onto the ground and gives an exhausted sigh.

“Did he really hit y’all that hard?”

“Come on now, Applejack. Claws six times as big as her, not only smacking her, but sending her crashing 100 tail-lengths into hard ground?” Rarity’s voice is brittle. She tries to act calm, but deep inside, she is really worried for her best friend. She's even afraid that a hug might hurt her.

“What do ya’ suppose we should do?” Applejack pauses. “Rainbow, can ya’ talk?”

Her tongue is dry with dirt. Her muzzle is scratched all over and bleeding. She feels like she’s bleeding everywhere, though. “I guess’.” It doesn't hurt so much talk.

Fluttershy shambles over to the commotion biting her lower lip. “How badly are you hurt?”

Rainbow Dash wants to say she feels broken everywhere, but she really isn’t and she doesn’t want her friends to worry too much.

Rainbow Dash softly grunts and pulls herself up, off the ground to stand without applying pressure on her injured leg. “My left foreleg hurts.” She tries to flap her wings. Only her right one won't. "My right wing hurts." Lastly, she glares at a wide, deep cut on one of her flanks, caused by the dragon itself. "And he scratched me…Do dragons have some kind of rabies?"

Fluttershy ponders for a moment. "I'm not sure. Besides Spike, I've never actually had a real conversation with a dragon. I don't know much about them."

“Poor dear. What hurts the most?” Rarity asks. Rainbow lifts up her numb left foreleg just a centimeter. It hurts. She flaps her right wing, and this hurts more. The scratch stings, her back aches. They all hurt just about the same.

“I can't really say. But I'm feeling better by the second, so you guys shouldn't worry too much.”

“Worried? Darling, your dripping blood from scratches and covered in grime!”

"Darn it, Pinkie! Why'd ya have ta take us here?" Applejack scowls.

“Applejack, don’t blame her, she was obviously confused,” Rarity retorts.

Applejack snorts. “From now on, Ah’ll be leading.”

Pinkie Pie pops her head next to Rainbow Dash and changes the direction of the conversation by saying, “Are your leg and wing broken? Sore? Do you feel like an alligator? Like Gummy?”

Rainbow decides to forget the last questions. “As far as I can tell... They are broken.”

Rarity gasps. “Broken? Goodness Dear, doesn't that hurt?"

It truly does hurt, very much so. But she can talk and breath and blink, so it is not as horrible as it could have been. “I’ll be fine, really. We should get going.”

"Rainbow, ya need ta get to a hospital. There's gotta be one in Canterlot." Applejack's eyes search frantically around the canyon. "Can ya still walk fine with a broken foreleg?"

Rainbow Dash tries walking without using her broken leg. The results are much slower, but about the same pace that Fluttershy travels with. "Yeah."

The new leader of the group pauses. “From Colt Canyon, we can just travel northeast ta Winsome Falls. Then we can eat dinner there. Sound good ta y'all?”

“Dinner time? But that’s like...so long away,” Rainbow complains.

“Don’t worry, Dashie. I have cupcakes,” Pinkie Pie replies with a smile.

“Cupcakes?”

“Yeah!” Pinkie Pie pulls two lemon cupcakes out of her frizzy magenta mane. They are littered with pink hair. Rainbow Dash sticks out her tongue and points a hoof to it.

“Gross, Pinks.” Pinkie Pie shrugs and pops them both into her mouth, swallowing them in one gulp.

The ponies don’t talk much as they trot, walk, and limp back into White Tail Woods in the northeast direction toward Winsome Falls.